Window title-bars missing occasionally in Unity

Question

window (title and icon) sometimes doesn't appear. As a solution to this, I have to logout and login again. Is there something wrong with my system? How to make sure that this doesn't happen again?

Solution 1

You can try couple of things:

1. Resetting Unity

   Hit Alt+F2 and run:

   unity --reset
   

   Please note that this will "reset profile parameters in compiz and restart the Unity shell with default settings." That is to say, you may lose some of your customizations (if you've made any), including to the notification area.

   However, this is still much safer than CCSM (described below), and it is a good idea to reset Unity before implementing a CCSM-based solution.

2. CompizConfig Settings Manager

   Install CCSM (If you don't already have it) by running following command in terminal

   sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
   

   Open it by searching "CCSM" in Unity dash.

   

   Once open, Click on the "Effects" category and make sure that "Window Decoration" is enabled.

   

Tip:

When window borders are missing you can still perform some basic functions like, minimise, maximise and move. Press and hold Alt and right click on the window.

Solution 2

Type the following in terminal:

nohup gtk-window-decorator --replace &

Hopefully, the above command should solve your problem.

Comments

[Confusion]

It solves the problem for me, but only temporarily. The process remains active and has to be backgrounded (if you want to use the terminal for anything else). If it gets killed, window borders are gone again.

[Lynch]

To keep the process running in background and allow to close the terminal I use this command: nohup gtk-window-decorator --replace &. Then you can safely close your terminal window.

[HDave]

This should be marked as the correct answer!

[Nathan J.B.]

Or press Alt+F2 and run the command there.

[Stuart Rossiter]

I have this problem occasionally (running Ubuntu 12.04LTS in a VMWare Player VM). In my case, CCSM shows window decoration enabled (even though the borders aren't there): unchecking and then checking it 'resets' it and restores the borders.