[SOLVED] Editing the Panel

[Don]

I have just upgraded from 20.04 to 22.04. I have noticed two differences in the way the panel seems to work. (1) I used to be able to arrange the panel icons in any sequence. 22.04 still allows some of that, but the icons for System Settings, Discover, and Dolphin seemed to be linked as a unit. My Icons-Only Settings specify "Do Not Group" and "Sort Manually." Am I missing something? (Note: this is not either the most important issue in the world today or even second most important.)

(2) 20.04 allowed changing the panel icons; 22.04 seems not to. Is that particular function gone, or is there just another way of accessing it that I've not yet stumbled upon? (I hesitate even to attempt to assign an importance number to this issue; I don't want to wear out my number keys.)

Thanks.

[Don]

I don't know how, but somehow I stumbled into the answers to both my questions. (Blind Monkey Thesis strikes again!)
(1) Instead of using the default panel, add a new panel, and add the applications you want on the panel one at a time. This seems not to create the undesirable link that I originally described.

(2) Caveat: You have to be operating as root to do this, so run sudo -i from a terminal, and enter your password to get continuing root access. But it's not good to run generally as root, so as soon as you've finished changing the icons, type exit in the terminal window to get back to your regular account.

From the Application Launcher, right-click on the application. Select "Edit application." in the pop-up that appears, the icon is changeable just as it was in 20.04.

[claydoh]

There are two ways of dealing with applications on panels: Pinning to Task Manager, and adding panel widgets.

'Pinning" an application to the Task Manager is done via the right-click on an application that is open, to pin/unpin it. These actually only reside in the Task Manager. You should be able to drag them around via a left-click-drag, but only within the task manager widget. These icons are not launcher widgets themselves. You can't edit the icons here, I think you need to edit the menu item's icon for the application.


Then there is dragging from the menus directly to the panel, which creates an individual launcher icon. You will note that you can't drop this into the Task Manager section. These you move around by doing the Edit Panel thing, and dragging the widgets around. This is where you see the group of icons moving together, as you were actually moving the task manager widget.
Having created the launcher widget for an application, those can be edited via the usual right-click menu.

You should NOT have needed to use sudo for this at all, never use sudo on local user settings. Ever.

I could have sworn I made a video of this, or had a link to one. It is much simpler to do than to describe, lol.