MATE Dock Applet is a MATE panel applet that displays open windows / applications as icons. The latest 0.78 version includes 5 new types of indicators, a new option to add space between dock icons, and more.
Among the MATE Dock Applet features are pinning applications to the dock, display an indicator for running applications, supports activating applications using keyboard shortcuts, and more. The applet can even change the color of MATE panels to the dominant desktop wallpaper color.
Changes in MATE Dock Applet 0.78 include:
- 5 new types of running application indicators: circle, square, triangle, diamond and subway. For the GTK3 version of the applet (Ubuntu 16.10 and newer), the indicator color will use the current theme highlight color. Since that’s not possible for GTK2, you can use the fallback color option to set this (see the MATE Dock Applet preferences, in the Misc tab);
- you can now set the spacing between dock icons. Supported values are 0-7 (Dock Preferences > Panel Options > App spacing);
- for windows requiring attention, you can now configure if a badge (exclamation mark) should be displayed on top of the icon instead of a blinking icon (Dock Preferences > Misc > Action when apps need attention).
Here are a few screenshots with some of these changes:
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| window requiring attention showing a badge (image via MATE Dock Applet release notes) |
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| “0” app spacing |
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| “7” app spacing |
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| New “Subway” running window indicator |
You can find more screenshots in the MATE Dock Applet 0.78 release notes.
Install MATE Dock Applet
MATE Dock Applet is available in the Ubuntu (MATE) repositories, but it’s not the latest version. You can see the version available for each Ubuntu release HERE. To install the version from the official Ubuntu MATE repositories, simply use the following command:
sudo apt install mate-dock-appletUbuntu MATE 17.04, 16.10, 16.04 or 14.04 users can install the latest MATE Dock Applet by using the WebUpd8 MATE PPA. Add the PPA and install the applet using the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/mate
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mate-dock-appletOnce installed, right click the MATE panel, select “Add to panel” and add the “Dock” applet.
To download the source, report bugs, etc., see the MATE Dock Applet GitHub page.
Originally published at WebUpd8: Daily Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.
