How to Hide the Top Bar and Side Panel in Ubuntu

You decided to try Ubuntu 22.04 and the Gnome desktop environment that comes with it. You feel, though, that Gnome’s top bar and side panel are always in the way and would prefer your apps to take up the whole screen. Learn how to hide the top bar and side panel in Ubuntu 22.04.

Also read: Ubuntu 20.04 Review: ZFS, Snap Store and Faster Desktop

Hide the Side Panel (Dock)

1. Press the Win key on your keyboard and type “dock” to filter the app list down to the sub-page you need in “Appearance Settings.”
2. Select the Settings entry that appears to open that page.

3. Enable the toggle next to “Auto-hide the Dock.”

Permanently Hide the Side Panel

It is also possible to completely disable the side panel in Ubuntu 22.04. This is useful if you want to have a vanilla GNOME desktop without reinstalling the entire desktop environment. Follow the instructions below:

1. Install the Gnome Extensions plugin:

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions

2. Open this program by going through your Applications Menu and typing “Extensions,” which will display an icon with four jigsaw puzzle pieces that you can click to launch the program.

3. The Extensions program will list all of the available add-ons that come with your default Ubuntu installation. Scroll down and toggle the “Ubuntu Dock” entry.

The side panel will be disabled, and any active window will be moved to the default Gnome dock in the Overview Menu.

Also read: How to Boot to Recovery Mode (Safe Mode) in Ubuntu

Hide the Top Bar in Ubuntu

1. Open your browser and visit Gnome’s Extensions page.
2. Click on “Click here to install browser extension” to install an add-on to Firefox that will enable one-click installation of extensions to your Gnome desktop.

3. When Firefox asks if you want to allow the site to install an add-on, click “Continue to Installation.”

4. Do the same for the pop-ups that follow. When the first asks if you want to “Add GNOME Shell Integration,” click “Add.” When it informs you that “GNOME Shell Integration has been added to Firefox,” click “Okay, Got It.”

5. There’s a search field under the link you used to install the GNOME Shell Integration extension in the previous step. Click on it and type “hide top bar” to find the Gnome extension you need.

6. Select the extension to visit its page. Apart from an extended description and the option to download it, you’ll also see a switch on the top right.
7. Click on this switch to toggle it to “On” and install the extension.

8. Click on “Install” in the pop-up that appears over the page.

9. You should now see that the top bar has disappeared (if your Firefox is in maximized mode).

Also read: 5 Ways to Hide Desktop Icons in Ubuntu

Selectively Hide the Top Bar in Ubuntu

It is also possible to only hide the top bar while inside the Overview Menu. Similar to hiding your desktop icons in Gnome, you need to install and modify a Gnome extension by following the below steps.

1. Turn off any extension that currently hides your top bar. For example, I toggled off the “Hide Top Bar” extension.

2. install “Hide Panel Lite” from the Gnome Extensions website.

3. Modify how this extension works by going to its source directory:

cd /home/$USER/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/hide-panel-lite@fthx/

4. Open and edit the “extension.js” file by running it with a text editor:

nano ./extension.js

5. Find the “enable()” function and edit both of the “this.showing” and “this.hiding” variables to look something like this:

this.showing = Overview.connect('hiding', this._show_panel.bind(this));
this.hiding = Overview.connect('showing', this._hide_panel.bind(this));

6. Save your file and reload Gnome by restarting your computer. Your top bar will disappear when you are inside the Overview Menu.

Auto-Hiding in Action

Both elements of the desktop auto-hide based on the proximity of other windows. Firefox is running in windows mode in my screenshot and doesn’t need the space occupied by the Dock and Top Bar, so they remain visible.

As Firefox’s window is moved to the left, the dock will auto-hide when they overlap.

If you move the window towards the top, the same will happen with the top bar.

And if you move it to the top left, they’ll disappear as the window approaches both. The same happens if you maximize a window.

Also read: Top 7 Debian-Based Distros to Try If You Want an Ubuntu Alternative

Frequently Asked Questions

Image credit: Safar Safarov via Unsplash Alterations and all screenshots by Ramces Red

Ramces Red - Staff Writer

Ramces is a technology writer that lived with computers all his life. A prolific reader and a student of Anthropology, he is an eccentric character that writes articles about Linux and anything *nix.