Erased Application and Files from the launcher, how do I get them back?

Question

Help! I deleted the application launcher in Unity, along with the Files and Folders launcher! How do I get them back?

Answer 1

The only way you can remove those two launchers (which are called lenses) is to remove their packages.

You need to ensure that these packages are installed (click the shopping bags):

• unity-place-applications
• unity-place-files

Then log out and back in.

Answer 2

Check this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1734534

and edit the same files to change ShowEntry=false into ShowEntry=true

Answer 3

I had these disappear randomly when I was first using Unity. Log out/in solved it, but that's clearly not ideal.

I think you might also be able to solve it by hitting

Ctrl + Alt + F1

Then logging in to that terminal and running

unity

Answer 4

And if none of the above works, you can reset all the panel icons back to "default" with the following: unity --reset-icons. You'll lose any custom ones you've added, but those can be re-added again with relative ease.