Unity Tweak Tool Available In The Ubuntu Repositories

Unity Tweak Tool is a relatively new application that allows you to configure Unity, providing access to settings buried deep in Dconf-Tools or CCSM.

The tool developed by the freyja-dev team is now available in the Ubuntu Software Center, so there's no need to use a PPA any more, which should expose this excellent tool to a lot more users. The application is also available in a PPA for Ubuntu 12.10.

The difference between Unity Tweak Tool and other such applications is the huge number of settings which it makes available for the everyday user (although Unsettings isn't far off, but it's not available for Ubuntu 13.04 yet), with a nice, polished user interface that comes with its own custom icons. 

Using Unity Tweak Tool, users can tweak:

• Unity Launcher: auto-hide behavior and animation, reveal location and sensitivity, transparency, color, visibility, change the Launcher icon size, urgent animation, launch animation, icons background and enable/disable 'Show Desktop';
• Unity Search (Dash): blur type and background, enable/disable online sources, show "more suggestions" or "recently used" applications as well as enable search of your files or clear search history;
• Unity Panel: menu visibility delay and transparency, tweak the date & time indicator, enable/disable bluetooth, power and volume indicator, show name on the panel and more;
• Unity Switcher: enable/disable "Show Desktop" icon in the switcher, switch between windows on all workspaces or only the current workspace, enable/disable switching between minimized applications, change the ALT + TAB and Launcher switcher keyboard shortcuts;
• Unity Web Apps: enable or disable the web apps and preauthorized domains
• Unity - Additional: change the HUD, show the launcher, execute command, etc. keyboard shortcuts and display notifications on all displays or only on the active display;
• Window Manager - General: tweak the desktop magnification, hardware acceleration, animations and some keyboard shortcuts;
• Window Manager: Workspace Settings: enable/disable the workspace switcher, change the number of horizontal and vertical workspaces, current workspace color or the workspace switcher keyboard shortcut;
• Window Manager - Window Spread: enable disable the window spread, set the spread spacing, enable/disable displaying icons on previews or click to access the desktop and change the window spread keyboard shortcuts;
• Window Manager - Window Snapping: enable / disable window snapping, change the outline and fill colors and set the window snapping behavior for each scren side / corner;
• Window Manager - Hotcorners: enable/disable hotcorners and change the behavior for each screen corner;
• Window Manager - Additional: set the auto-raise delay, focus mode, titlebar actions or resizing outline and fill colors;
• Appearence: change the icon, GTK and window decoration themes, change the cursors, fonts and window controls;
• System: enable/disable displaying icons on the desktop, set the home folder, network, rubbish bin or devices icons to show up on the desktop, security settings such as desktop lock, user log out and user switching and scrolling options: enable / disable the overlay scrollbars, the overlay scrollbars behavior (deault, overlay with mouse or no overlay) as well as touch scrolling settings (edge, two-finger and horizontal scrolling).

Unity Tweak Tool also comes with some minor but very useful features: for instance, when you change a GTK / window decoration theme, if you don't scroll on one of the columns, when selecting a theme, both the GTK and window decorations theme will be changed in the same time, something that may not seem like much, but no similar application allows this and I for one really like this feature.

It's also worth mentioning that any changes you make are applied instantly and there's a "Restore defaults" button for each section, in case you want to go back to the default Unity settings.

Here are a few more Unity Tweak Tool screenshots:

Install Unity Tweak Tool

Since Unity Tweak Tool is now available in the official Ubuntu repositories, if you're using Raring or newer, simply search for it in the Ubuntu Software Center or click the button below to install it:

Optionally, you can also install it via command line:

sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

Unity Tweak Tool is also available in a daily PPA, if you want to get the latest changes (but that also means it's unstable!):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freyja-dev/unity-tweak-tool-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

If you encounter bugs, report them @ Launchpad.