How do I restart Unity

Question

I know about unity --reset command. But how can I simply restart Unity without resetting its profile?

score 80 · Accepted Answer · edited May 04 '12 at 04:35

80

I don't use Unity but given what I know of its mechanics, this should work:

unity

You'll want to stick that in a run box (Alt+F2) rather than a terminal or it'll break when you exit the terminal.

If you want to run it from a terminal use:

setsid unity

edited May 04 '12 at 04:35

Jjed

14,064

answered Mar 24 '11 at 13:46

Oli

299,380

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 08 '12 at 15:17

I found killall -u USR1 -r -g unity* (optionally, with -i for interactive) to be more effective than @Andrew's answer. My only problem with this vs unity --replace is that it will kill your session which unity --replace doesn't do. So, reserve this for when it is severely broken.

score 5 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 11 '11 at 11:16

5

killall -USR1 unity will restart it in an account (USR1) where you have not changed your killall defaults.

edited Jun 11 '11 at 11:16

ubuntudroid

490

answered Apr 28 '11 at 20:33

Andrew Wonnacott

278

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 20 '13 at 01:47

1

Another alternative that works is

pkill --signal USR1 unity

answered Nov 20 '13 at 01:47

freethinker

1,170

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 14 '19 at 07:32

unity

which starts a new GUI connected to your terminal. however, if you run this over SSH, ehm, this is probably not the best IDE, because your local desktop 'unity' instance is then bound to this terminal on your remote-desctop...

funny things occur, when you terminate this session. Step by step your GUI will vanish and the only thing which remains under your control is the pointer of your mouse.

I found this post really helpful, which sumarises the commands mentioned in other answers.

How do I restart Unity

5 Answers5

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