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I have my laptop set up with an extended display in Ubuntu mate. when I add the screen, all my desktop Icons move to the extended portion. How do I prevent that from happening? I have been using Display under System -> preferences -> hardware -> displays.

I would like the screen to just be available as an extension to my desktop area, and not pull the panel or desktop icons on to it.

WinEunuuchs2Unix
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j0h
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  • Do you have the external monitor left or right? – Jacob Vlijm Apr 14 '16 at 18:40
  • on the right. (I didn't realize it made a difference) – j0h Apr 14 '16 at 18:50
  • Take a look at [this](http://askubuntu.com/a/573359/123714) answer. Use the command `gvfs-info -a 'metadata::nautilus-icon-position' ...` for some icon on your desktop (it can be `caja-icon-position` in your case, as you use MATE). Is it relative to the top-left corner of your leftmost monitor when both are attached? BTW, these icon positions are stored in `.config/caja/desktop-metadata`. – whtyger May 18 '16 at 09:41

2 Answers2

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The problem in your case is that when you are connecting the external monitor, it is by default being taken as the primary screen which is in left and you have to move your cursor to right of your extended monitor to get it on the laptop screen. This is problem is easily solved when you are using the light environments like LXDE. They have it on their monitor settings. For non LXDE environments, the package called ARandR helps a lot. Its in Ubuntu's repository, so to install it you can run the following command:

sudo apt-get install arandr

run it using:

arandr

A gui will appear like this:

arandr gui

now position your extended display by dragging using mouse and apply.

Rahul Shaw
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I wrote iconic to solve this problem by letting you move icons to any one of three monitors. Additionally it will:

  • Define a grid size to spread icons evenly across desktop as close or far apart as you prefer
  • Not suffer the "lost icon syndrome" that occurs when monitors of multiple resolutions are used
  • Sort icons alphabetically, alphabetically with "Link to" prefix ignored, sort by modified date ascending or date descending
  • Allow different grid size (columns x rows) depending on monitor, EG more on 4K monitor than 2K monitor
  • Instant Test button for quick experimentation on column x row changes or reserved space changes for monitor left, top, right or bottom areas
  • Test button will last for x seconds defined by you, clear all windows before test and restore them after test
  • Bash script for easy modifications

You can get the script on github.

Here's the main screen:

iconic main menu.png

Visit the github page for iconic to see all the other screens, explanations and a copy of the script.

WinEunuuchs2Unix
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