Well this is unexpected: after years of refusing to budge on the issue, Canonical has, finally, included an option to enable ‘minimise on click’ behaviour on the Unity Launcher.
The long-sought feature allows app windows to be minimised by clicking its respective icon in the Unity Launcher, and restore it on subsequent click. Despite the demand for such an option, Canonical had previously rejected several community patches that would’ve added it sooner.
Its arrival is the latest in a string of out standing user experience issues to be patched up ahead of the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release, joining a newly unified lockscreen, support for locally-integrated menus and the reintroduction of borderless app windows.
Coming, But In What Form?
Confirming the news on the bug report requesting the feature, Ubuntu developer Chris Townsend gave further details on what to expect:
We are going to put in as an unsupported option to allow clicking the Launcher icon of single windowed apps and minimize that window. By unsupported, I mean that functionality is “as-is” and no more tweaks or enhancements to it.
It’s currently unclear how or where the option will surface in the main UI (or if it ever will) it is unlikely to be put anywhere where Joe User can accidentally activate it. The current code points to it being available through the Unity plugin pane of the Compiz Config Settings Manager.
The feature will also only work on applications when they have a single window open. Clicking on an app icon with more than once window open will continue to open the App Spread, the standard Unity behaviour.
Good news? It certainly will be to a large chunk of you. In a poll we ran last month almost 58% of you said you thought minimize on click should be added to Unity.