On every computer I’m using I like to get the maximum screen estate I can. I also like to enjoy my wall papers without having the two default Gnome panels in the way.
Here are some tweaks I do on every computer I use (that’s true especially for notebooks and netbooks like the eeePc ).
Set your panels to auto hide:
Right click on each panel, select Properties and activate the autohide checkbox.
Now we have panels automatically hiding. But the response it’s too slow to be really usable. And even when they’re hidden, you can see a small part of them. That brings us to the next point.
Tweak panels gconf properties:
Start the gconf editor:
you@yourcomputer:~$ gconf-editor
then browse to /apps/panel/toplevels. There you’ll find two folders: bottom_panel_screen0 and top_panel_screen0.
Note: the picture doens’t show all the keys to tweak. Refer to the explaination below.
For each one, you need to tweak the following keys:
- auto_hide_size: 0
- enable_animations: unchecked
- hide_delay: 0
- unhide_delay: 0
Now you’re done. The panel are almost completely hidden, but also show up very fast when you hover your mouse on the top/bottom of the screen!
Making panels a little more usable
Now that your panels are hidden the most of the time, there’s no reason to have them so small. You probably want’em big to be a easier target for your mouse. Also, they look much nicer if you increase their size.
Open again the properties windows of each panel and increase the size to 48 pixel. Depending on your theme you may also want to change their background. I like them to be white, for example.
This is just beautiful to me.
Drawbacks
Gnome ain’t perfect. The a row 1px tall still shows for each panel. Also, not every application has icons that scale gracefully to 48px.
Let me know if you like this panel set up !
What’s next ?
If you like MacOsX-like docks, you may want to try Docky !
Great tip. Thanks.
Very nice. Mine are now five 9s percent hidden.
Delete the bottom panel. Move top to bottom. Add panel to side, put on this panel the disk-mount, sys monitor, keyboard indicator, notification and window selector applets. Don’t set it autohide, but minimum width. Next to this set up conky on the desktop, and set the bottom panel to hide – the menu, windows selector, stuff you don’t need to see.
Now to select windows, use the ‘scale windows’ applet, or pop up the bottom bar. To use the menu hit Alt F1 and arrows and learn to use something like launchy, gnome-do, or ALT F2 to launch stuff. This way you have full vertical screen space – best for browsing – and no annoying pop down panel when you try to access the top bar of a window (tried autohiding the top menu bar?)
out of 1440×900 I have available almost the full 900 (take away 20 px for vertical windows, due to decorations) and plenty of width (1030 is big enough for nearly all sites I go to) so I have spare room at the sides for other stuff too.
Just what I needed. Thanks.
An alternative is to move the panels to the compiz widget layer. Have a look at this article http://blog.adaniels.nl/articles/hide-gnome-panel/
@Arnold: nice tip ! you know what ? I’d just prefer the gnome panels not being so buggy. But one cannot have everything O:-). Thanks !
Also, if you change to ’100′ or less the ‘unhide-delay’ value, you get a much better response.
Excellent tip thanks. I find setting animation speed to fast is acceptable.
Thanks for the tip, it is very useful! I created a script using gconftool, that toggles panels between fast auto hide and static modes: http://pp.com.mx/linux.html#gnome
I have customized my panels, and set them to auto-hide, but I can’t get them to reappear! I also can’t add an extra panel or view my notifications, since they are hidden. Help. Please. I couldn’t find anything through Google.