How to have a Global Menu in Ubuntu Mate thanks to Vala Panel AppMenu

The spread of environments such as Unity or MacOS have made more and more users use menus such as Global Menu. A global menu feature that is practical for many users. How to have this in our Ubuntu we have already explained, as well as how to have it in Xubuntu.

Today we are going to tell you how to have it in Ubuntu MATE thanks to an application called Vala Panel AppMenu. This application is capable of applying a substantial change to the MATE menus, that is, leaving aside the old Gnome aspect.

Vala Panel AppMenu will help us to have the menus outside the application window

To get Vala Panel AppMenu working on MATE, first we must have the latest version of MATE or Ubuntu MATE 16.10. We will also need the following libraries GLib 2.40 or later, Prevalac 0.24 or later and libbamf 0.5.0 or later. Once we meet these requirements, we open a terminal in Ubuntu MATE and write the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/mate
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mate-applet-vala-appmenu unity-gtk3-module unity-gtk2-module appmenu-qt appmenu-qt5

This will install the application. Now we have to configure it to work with various Ubuntu MATE applications. So we open the following file with the terminal ~ / .config / gtk-3.0 / settings.ini and under "SETTINGS" we paste the following:

gtk-shell-shows-app-menu=true
gtk-shell-shows-menubar=true

If we don't have it, we have to create the folder and the file with the previous information. Once done, we save everything and restart the session. Now, we only have to insert the Vala Panel AppMenu in the Ubuntu MATE panel, otherwise it will not work.

So on the panel we will right click with the mouse and choose the option «Add Item», among the list of elements that we can add, we will choose Vala Panel AppMenu and that's it, We will already have the Global Menu option in Ubuntu MATE. It's a long process, but if we really appreciate this kind of customization, the end result will pay off.

Source: Webupd8