You boot up your laptop, login, and then: poof, your toolbars are gone. This is annoying, and the advice you find online is quite erratic.

This has worked for you in the past:

  • Go into the tty using Ctrl+Alt(+Fn)+F1.
  • Login.
  • Start a terminal on the graphical interface: $ DISPLAY=:0 gnome-terminal.
  • Go back to the graphical interface with Alt(+Fn)+F7.
  • In the terminal, type $ dconf reset -f /org/compiz.
  • Then, type setsid unity.
  • Finally, type unity --reset-icons.

You’re done. Feel free to reboot and verify that it still works.

If this doesn’t work, do the following:

  • Go into the tty using Ctrl+Alt(+Fn)+F1.
  • Login.
  • Remove the compiz config: $rm -rf ~/.config/compiz-1/compizconfig/*
  • Reboot.