Embiggen your Unity

For those who want a bit more chunkiness in your user interfaces there is a little option tucked away to boost the size of the unity launcher icons. Using the CompizConfig Settings Manager (which is available in the software centre, or sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager from the command line) you can go to the experimental tab of the Unity plugin and change the value of the launcher icon size parameter. It varies from 32 to 64 with the default being 48. The screenshot below shows the effect of setting it to 64 (click the screenshot to see it actual size – the blog might rescale it a bit)

It isn’t a huge difference and it doesn’t affect other parts of Unity, purely the launcher size, but for some it may make icons easier to recognise and target with the mouse. There are a few other options in the plugin you might want to adjust to taste. If you find the launcher sliding in and out problematic you can set it to hide “never” and it will stay on the left side of the screen so won’t pop out and obscure back buttons. (of course this comes at a cost of between 32 and 64 horizontal pixels available for applications)