How to add Top Bar menu; File, View, History, Tools...for applications in 18.04?

Question

I am aware Unity is no longer the default desktop and is replaced by GNOME desktop starting 18.04 LTS. Since 15.04 I have been using Unity.

Now I want to use the default GNOME desktop for 18.04 LTS but would like to get my application menus in the Top Bar.

Menus: File, View, History, Tools, etc from applications that I use, I cannot find anywhere. Instead I have one option in a drop down which is generally "Quit".

There must be a default secret somewhere that lets me customize my user experience to some degree as the 18.04 LTS developers envisioned. Where is it hiding? How can I get my needs met according to GNOME developer design.

Thanks for your help

Solution

The feature you are describing is called Ubuntu Global Menu.

It's available here:
Gnome Global Application Menu(HUD for Gnome)

There are a number of ways to install it. But I found the most convenient way is to use the Chrome Extension interface.

You can do this by adding the Chrome support extension to Ubuntu 18.04 with this command:

$ sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

Then turn on the feature from Chrome. You'll have to reboot to make the changes come into effect.

I tested it on both a fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and an Version upgrade to 18.04 LTS (from 14.04 LTS). They both worked fine.

After the reboot, you can turn the feature on and off from the Chrome Extensions page without rebooting.

There are some comments concerning problems in the past when it was still in the development. As far as I can see the bugs has been worked out. The recent comments are positive.

Comments

[xtrchessreal]

@pomsky I see what you mean. You know I searched 15 different ways to find this question before I posted mine. The search engine could use some updates perhaps. How does one know what to search for if you don't know the exact name of the thing you are looking for e.g. Gnome Global Application Menu. I searched each of the tags on my question before posting: Gnome, Menu, 18.04, Top-Bar. I missed Global Application by >< that much. lol Oh well at least I got an answer that worked for me.

[Hadi Rasekh]

The problem is this menu is not application menu and it has different behaviour. But if anyone want to use this feature, It's worth to mention that after sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell you can install the chrome-gnome-shell extension in chrome, and then search for Gnome Global Application Menu feature and install it from there

[Reilstein]

It looks like this extension is no longer being updated/developed - is this really the only option for enabling application menus? I don't understand how the application menus have just disappeared in gnome - how have gnome users been dealing with this for years????