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I have a three monitor setup, where the left monitor is positioned lower than the other two. I want to setup the monitor layout accordingly, but when I do that, some of the desktop icons are not appearing... It looks like the icons are put on the top left of the X screen, regardless of the layout of the monitors... How can this be solved?

see this image: enter image description here where the black-yellow blocks are the icons, so the first two are off screen and the third partially... even re-organizing the desktop icons will not solve it...

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  • I just installed Ubuntu 14.04, and I'm having the same problem now. Did you ever find a solution to this?
    – Michael Hoffmann
    Feb 20, 2015 at 4:36
  • I just reorganized my physical monitors setup so that they are on the same height...
    – intrixius
    Feb 20, 2015 at 18:05
  • Oh... I'd have to build a little platform for my laptop to do that. :/ I'll keep looking for solutions, and answer here if I find one. Thanks.
    – Michael Hoffmann
    Feb 21, 2015 at 20:16
  • I know It's been long time, but the problem remains. I'm solving it with opening "Displays" (Display Manager). And that's it, nothing else needed to be done. I guess that by opening the manager it reset some of it's configurations.
    – Izik
    Feb 19, 2020 at 23:55

8 Answers 8

Reset to default
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Even though this is a bit old I'd like to answer this for other people who found this thread when trying to fix this issue, like me.

I found the fix is extremely simple.

  • Open the file manager and navigate to the desktop folder located in your Home folder. (The file manager will show all your desktop icons there)
  • Now simply drag and drop the icons you need moved from the file manager to the place you want on your desktop.

Instead of duplicating the icons, it will simply relocate the existing ones to where you want.

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    That fixes the problem today, but not every day in the future when say, files are created at the command-line and are hidden offscreen in the top left corner.
    – Gringo Suave
    May 10, 2017 at 17:44
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My solution was to create empty folders to fill the hidden space. Resize the icon to be the max size (or as big as needed), give it a transparent icon, and name it with only spaces. Then drag them into position. To more accurately place them, create a visible row of folders below the invisible ones, select them all to move them, and delete the visible ones.

Obviously, not ideal, but all I could figure out. Don't understand why icons can't appear on the primary monitor first...

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Occasionally I have the same problem. It is only a temporary solution, but here it is: sudo nautilus Then cut all the desktop icons from the desktop folder into a folder elsewhere. Once done, copy and drag the icons back onto the desktop and rearrange them from there. It is isn't the best solution, but it works.

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Simple: move the left hand monitor (in software) to the top of the screen. That will force the icons back down onto it.

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    This is not a solution to the problem. The OP will have reasons for the desktop placement.
    – MPi
    Nov 30, 2016 at 10:34
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Try using another display manager. Maybe ARandR could do the trick. sudo apt-get install arandr. Afterwards open it typing nohup arandr in the command line.

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Go to the file manager of your system and and navigate to the Desktop folder, then drag-n'-drop the icons from there onto your actual desktop.

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One significant fix could be to turn off the "Keep Aligned" option in the context menu on the desktop. Right click on desktop to bring up the context menu. And turn off keep aligned. Whatever you place on the desktop will then keep in its position. Auto alignment seems to be doing some funny stuff.

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I wrote the iconic script to give control over which monitor icons are placed on. It also ensures icons don't get placed into the "black hole" that exists when monitors of different resolutions are used.

Here are a few screenshots of iconic to give you an idea of how it works.

iconic Monitors Notebook General Tab screenshot

iconic monitors general.png

On this notebook tab you can also specify the number of seconds a test will last. Press the Test button to place icons on the Desktop using currently defined each time you change the reserved screen space.

iconic Monitors Notebook Monitor 3 tab

iconic monitors monitor 3.png

Assign a user friendly name to each monitor. Set the number of rows and columns to utilize for icon placement on each monitor.

Use the Test button to view what icon placement after number or columns and/or rows are changed.

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  • How do I install this?
    – ahorn
    Feb 13, 2020 at 12:17
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    @ahorn The bash script is found at: github.com/WinEunuuchs2Unix/iconic/blob/master/iconic. Save it to a file in your executable path like /usr/local/bin/iconic. Then make it executable with sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/iconic. Note after installation you may be prompted to install dependencies like sudo apt install yad.
    – WinEunuuchs2Unix
    Feb 14, 2020 at 2:34

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