What is Drawers?
Drawers is a an application which allows a user to group a bunch of application shortcuts together in one folder and hence free up the space from the main launcher. Drawers, as the name suggests like a table drawer, keeps files (read apps shortcuts) in it. And you can open the drawer to find the file (read launch the app).
Install Drawers in Ubuntu:
There is a PPA available from the developers to install Drawer in Ubuntu. Open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type the following commands:
How to use Drawers?
Once you have Drawers installed, go to Unity dash and launch Drawers.
As soon as it is opened, it will prompt you to create a new group/drawer. I named it “Browser” to keep all my web browsers in it.
It creates a new drawer by the name of “Browsers”, in my case, in the location”~/.local/share/applications“. Go to this location and drag and drop this newly created drawer in the launcher. Now we need to add applications by drag and drop in the drawer. Few things to note here:
Make sure that you have opened the newly created drawer.
You cannot drag and drop applications from launcher itself. You have to look in to the dash first and then drag and drop the application into drawer. Once you have successfully dragged and dropped apps (or files or folders) in the drawer, you will be able to see them by left clicking on the drawer:
Right click on the drawer shows the apps in text columns instead of icons:
You can also rearrange the apps in the drawer by dragging them. Clicking on the settings button gives you a wide variety of configuration option such as renaming the drawer, using a custom icon, changing the font size, transparency etc.
What do you think of Drawers?
What are your views on Drawers? Do you think it is worth giving a try or you would stick to the way you were using the launcher previously. If you liked it, do you think it deserves a place in Ubuntu Software Centre? Do let us know of your views.
