Give Xfce a Mac or Unity-style makeover

PART 2 Xfce's Panel Profiles app can rearrange your desktop, but getting every layout working properly still takes some manual tinkering.

In part 1 of this two-part feature, we covered how to install Xfce's Panel Profiles tool and all the extra plugins it needs for its dozen alternative layouts: macOS, Unity, MATE or GNOME 2, several different Windows-like layouts, and half a dozen different generations of both Xfce and Xubuntu.

However, as our screenshots showed, the "Cupertino" (Mac-style) and "Unity" layouts are not ideal.

For instance, the Unity layout's global menu is immediately followed by the status icons, when they ought to be over on the right.

Some of these issues are easy to resolve with the built-in tools, while some need a little more work.

Fixing the menu bar In the Unity layout, it's easy to push the status icons and session controls over to the right, where they belong.

Customizing Xfce panels is easy.

Choose the panel you want to change, find a blank part of the panel, and right-click it.

Go into the Panel submenu, then click Panel preferences.

In the Panel Preferences dialog box, the first two lines are a backup button, then a listbox to choose which panel you're editing.

Under those, there's a line of three tabs: Display, Appearance, and Items.

Click on the last tab, Items.

This lists all the plugins the panel currently contains, and on the right of the list, there are buttons labeled with up and down arrows to change what order they show in.

To fix the Unity panel, we need to add a separator to the top panel, immediately after the appmenu, and set it to Transparent and Expand.