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up vote 13 down vote favorite
3

Possible Duplicate:
How can I move all the window controls to the right?

without realising, the Windows Controls (max, min, close) have been moved to the right hand side without me realising. I was just wondering, how would I go about changing it back to the left and does anyone know why this might have happened?

This is in 12.04 precise.

Thanks

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Did you change the theme, or switch from Unity or Gnome or Gnome classic? It's an odd thing to just happen, I think (at least I've never heard of it), unless you changed something else, and if that's the case it would be helpful in tracking down the problem and figuring out how to fix it. – Kelley Apr 21 '12 at 18:19
1  
Thanks for the reply. As I said, extremely odd thing to just happen, which is why I don't understand it! And I'd love to know why and how it happened. I changed the theme a few days ago, but now back to standard Ambiance. I guess ubuntu-forums might be the best place to get some help as to why it happened. – dtreagus Apr 21 '12 at 18:34
Please add more information or at least a picture so we can see what's going on. – Jorge Castro Apr 21 '12 at 21:21
1  
same problem for me. tried gnome shell after upgrade then back to unity and buttons on wrong side now. uninstalled gnome shell but nothing. – Dustin Apr 27 '12 at 4:58

marked as duplicate by Tachyons, Eric Carvalho, Eliah Kagan, The Lord of Time, Jorge Castro Jan 26 at 3:54

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5 Answers

up vote 15 down vote

12.10 and later

in 12.10 (most likely 12.04 as well) and newer gconfeditor wont work use this:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout ':minimize,maximize,close'
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Protip: if you delete the colon and forget to add it back, you'll loose your menu bar and it will be really annoying/buggy behavior (the terminal doesn't show any text) until you set it back and restart. – Carrotman Feb 14 at 18:33
up vote 10 down vote

12.04 and before

This just happened to me as well (upgraded two days ago from 11.10, did not attempt to install gnome shell or additional themes). As far as the controls go, you can restore them to the 12.04 defaults by using gconf-editor, and editing the value for apps/metacity/general/button_layout.

Mine was :minimize,maximize,close, which has not been the default for a while on ubuntu. Change it to close,maximize,minimize: to get the 12.04 defaults (restore defaults did not work for me).

No other options seem to have been affected, but it literally just happened so I could be wrong.

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1  
in gconf-editor, make sure the colon is in the right place. if you want the buttons to be on the left side, put the colon at the end of the string, otherwise at the beginning – user83270 Aug 14 '12 at 10:15
up vote 3 down vote

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides button-layout :close,minimize,maximize

Try the above command in the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T). This will work. It actually follows the principle of slicing in Python. You can give close,minimize,maximize: to move the keys to left. Further u can interchange the positions of close,minimize and maximize :)

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up vote 1 down vote

I found that the gconf-editor suggestion just reversed the order of the buttons. They remained on the right hand side of the window. To switch buttons to the left hand upper corner, I used System Settings > Ubuntu Tweak > Tweaks > Window. Window Control

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up vote 0 down vote

you may need this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQr3kQl9vI

[FROM DESCRIPTION]

Run Application: gconf-editor Navigate to: apps - metacity - general click button_layout Change to: menu:minimize,maximize,close

if gconf-editor is not installed, you can install from ubuntu software center or Ctrl+Alt+T (open terminal) and paste

sudo apt-get install gconf-editor

press enter, write password and press enter

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