Hide or Remove Ubuntu Side Dock

Ubuntu is one of the most famous Linux operating system. But its look and feel might not suit everybody. But sometimes you just want to change things a bit. That’s why in this tutorial we will show you how to Auto hide the Ubuntu side dock and top bar.

This auto-hide feature makes complete screen space available for Apps. And when you want to see the dock just navigate the mouse cursor towards the dock area and it pops up.

You can even hide Ubuntu Dock permanently so that it will never disturb you again. Or if you want you can remove it permanently.

Auto-Hide Ubuntu Dock

This feature will temporarily hide the dock and when you want to access it just navigate the cursor towards the dock and it will appear.

Press Windows or Command key or Super key(depending on your keyboard), then search for Settings. Click on Settings in search result, it will open Settings.

In Settings, click on the Dock menu, toggle the Auto-Hide the Dock to ON. This will start Auto-hiding feature of Ubuntu Dock.

You can even change the position of the dock from left side, just select preferred side of the dock in Position on screen.

Permanently Hide the Ubuntu Dock

If you don’t just want to use the Ubuntu dock then its better to hide it permanently. To hide it permanently you can install Dconf Editor.

The drawback to this method is it will hide the dock but it will still consume system resources. But still its better than removing and reinstalling packages.

Just open Ubuntu software store and search for Dconf Editor and install it. Launch Dconf Editor and then navigate to /org/gnome/shell/extensions/dash-to-dock. Then set autohide, dock-fixed and intellihide to OFF.

Using command line instead of Dconf Editor

You can also hide the dock permanently using command line, just run the commands below.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock autohide false

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock dock-fixed false

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock intellihide false

In case you change your mind you can make the dock visible by commands below.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock autohide true

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock dock-fixed true

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock intellihide true

Permanently Remove or Disable Ubuntu Dock

To permanently remove the dock you will have to use the command below. But before that, you should know without the Dock you may have no way of accessing installed application list.

Obviously, that’s not the case if you are planning to replace the dock with some other application like Dash to Panel. These other applications can also provide a way to access the Installed Applications.

Now its up to you what you want to achieve. Although you will always have a non Graphical way to access installed applications buy pressing Windows or Command key or Super and A together.

There is one more thing removing Ubuntu Dock extension also removes Ubuntu-Desktop meta package from your system. Although there is no immediate issue but when you upgrade to newer Ubuntu versions any new Ubuntu-desktop dependencies won’t be installed.

To fix it, you can again install Ubuntu-desktop before upgrading to newer Ubuntu versions. Simply install ubuntu-desktop(this will also install Ubuntu Dock again).

If you are okay and want to remove the dock, here is the command to remove Ubuntu dock completely.

sudo apt remove gnome-shell-extension-ubuntu-dock

If later you want Ubuntu dock extension back just simply install ubuntu- desktop by the command below.

sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop

Conclusion:

We hope this guide helped you, if you have any other question do mention in comments.

Here is another article, Features of Linux operating system for beginners.