Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

MATE Dock Applet is a MATE Panel applet that displays running application windows as icons. The applet features options to pin applications to the dock, supports multiple workspaces, and can be added to any MATE Panel, regardless of size and orientation.

Mate Dock Applet Unity Badge Progress Bar Support

The latest MATE Dock Applet 0.74, released today, includes a feature requested by some of you: it can now display Unity-like progress bars and badges on top of the icons, for applications that support this. You can see this in action, in the screenshot above, for Transmission. 

Transmission doesn't come with Unity Launcher badge/progress bar support by default - if you want this feature for Transmission, see THIS article.

Other changes in MATE Dock Applet 0.74 include:
  • corrected position of window lists on non-expanded panels;
  • fixed window list flickering on bottom aligned panels on MATE built with GTK3;
  • increased the delay before window lists are shown when the mouse hovers over an app icon. It was 0.5 seconds, and is now 1 second;
  • fixed a bug that would cause Pin/Unpin actions to act upon previously highlighted app icons, rather than the one that is currently highlighted;
  • shortened pin/unpin window list text. It now says "Pin" rather than "Pin to the dock", and the Unpin text is similarly shortened;
  • when starting to drag an app icon, the window list is now hidden (note: MATE Dock Applet supports drag and drop for moving dock icons only if it's built with GTK3, like for Ubuntu MATE 16.10 Yakkety Yak, in both the official repositories and WebUpd8 MATE PPA).

Important: For window minimizing and maximizing to work correctly under Compiz, the Focus Prevention Level setting must be set to off (this can be done from CompizConfig Settings Manager, under General Options > Focus & Raise Behaviour).


Install MATE Dock Applet


MATE Dock Applet is available in the official Ubuntu MATE 16.04 and 16.10 repositories, but it's an older version. Update: MATE Dock Applet 0.74 is now available in the Ubuntu MATE 16.10 proposed repositories. To install it from the official repositories, use:
sudo apt install mate-dock-applet

You can install the latest MATE Dock Applet in Ubuntu MATE or Linux Mint MATE by using the WebUpd8 MATE PPA. To add the PPA and install MATE Dock Applet, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/mate
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mate-dock-applet

For other Linux distributions, see the MATE Dock Applet installation page.