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

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What about unity --replace? –  Reda Lazri Mar 24 '11 at 11:29
What's the equivalent for Unity 2D? askubuntu.com/questions/52179/how-do-i-restart-unity-2d –  type Jul 10 '11 at 12:14
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4 Answers

up vote 55 down vote accepted

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


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
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That's correct. Although, logging out and back in works better in my experience (I'm using Unity as my main desktop environment at this point) –  jrg Mar 24 '11 at 14:15
A good way to do it in a terminal, in case you want to see debug messages, is setsid unity. You can close the terminal when ever you like, but you'll still get the terminal output made by Unity. –  Stefano Palazzo Mar 24 '11 at 19:45
If you want to run that in terminal without breaking it when you exit terminal, type: 'unity --replace &' –  Rafał Cieślak Apr 27 '11 at 17:41
Just using unity will work as it is the identical command. –  Cas May 11 '11 at 16:20
using unity --replace have a tiny catch, you have to launch the menu once then only the left bar will auto-hide after restarted –  d4v1dv00 May 25 '11 at 13:49
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killall -USR1 unity will restart it in an account (USR1) where you have not changed your killall defaults.

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thank you, ubuntudroid –  Andrew Jun 18 '11 at 0:07
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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.

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Another alternative that works is

pkill --signal USR1 unity
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