How to fix oversized icons on Dash?

Question

When an icon is changed from its default for a personalized one, it turns to be bigger than normal on the dash. How to make they look normal?

Answer 1

put this code in your terminal will take up less space.

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity form-factor Desktop

Answer 2

Over time, several bug reports have been posted on the subject, like this one, but the phenomenon seems to be kind of persistent over different Ubuntu (Unity) versions.

How to fix it

Although the issue seems to be related to the path to your icon, I cannot offer you any insight in what exactly causes the problem.

I do know how to fix it however:

1. Copy your custom icon to a directory from where you can set your icon without using the path to the icon, like /usr/share/pixmaps. Copy the icon including its extension.

2. In your .desktop file, set the icon without path and without extension:

    Icon=custom_icon
   

3. Then log out and back in

The result:

Icon=custom_icon

instead of:

Icon=/path/to/custom_icon.png