One of the recent additions to Ubuntu is the idea of overlay scrollbars. Instead of the scrollbar constantly taking up 8 or 10 (or more) pixels, the scrollbar disappears, only to be replaced by a thin sliver of color (usually orange, but blue in the screenshot below).
When you hover your mouse near the scrollbar position, it quickly pops into view, only to fade away when you're done scrolling.
Of course, not everyone liked the switch from the traditional scrollbar to the new overlay scrollbars, and while it is certainly possible to turn off the functionality (at least one of the three Ubuntu Unity configuration programs we covered in this article offer that feature), there isn't the ability, at least not from the standard control panel.
Fortunately, getting rid of the overlay scrollbars – and reverting to the traditional scrollbars in the process – isn't that difficult. Using this method (as opposed to using one of the configuration editors from the article mentioned above), means removing the overlay scrollbars from your system, but if you don't want them, this is probably an acceptible solution.
First, open up your Terminal.
Next, type sudo apt-get remove overlay* –purge to remove the overlay-scrollbar package, as well as two libraries (liboverlay-scrollbar-0.2-0 and liboverlay-scrollbar3-0.2-0) used to draw the scrollbars in GTK2 and GTK3 applications.
Note: as a warning, the above command, which uses the asterisk, will search your installed packages for anything containing "overlay" in its name. It is possible that another package may have that and would be deleted, so be careful that only the three packages mentioned are removed. Otherwise, typing sudo apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar liboverlay-scrollbar-0.2.0 liboverlay-scrollbar3-0.2.0 –purge will do the trick as well, with no chance of something else mistakenly being deleted.
Once the packages have been deleted, new applications should use the traditional scrollbars. Applications already running (including Nautilus, which draws both the desktop and acts as your file manager), will continue to use the overlay scrollbars until the program is restarted.
To quicken this process, you can simply logout, then log back in.
You should now find that all your scrollbars look like this.
It's nice, as always, that this new feature can be removed without hurting functionality. And it's even better that 3rd party configuration tools are starting to make it possible to turn off the feature without removing it entirely. But for those who don't like the overlay scrollbars, and don't want to install an extra piece of software just to turn them off, this is a quick and easy solution.
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