It could have been that I wasn’t using the right search terms, but for the life of me I couldn’t find a solution for how to fix things when the panel icons in Ubuntu get rearranged by the system.

Some have reported the issues are resolved after a reboot, but I know I didn’t get those results after rebooting 5 times. I finally figured out how to get things back to default locations.

I’m assuming that you’re reading this because you’re an Ubuntu user, so you should know that from right to left in the upper panel you should see: Your User name (where you’d get a drop down for logging off, shutting down etc), the time/date and finally any number of panel icons (bluetooth, network, ubuntu one cloud icon)

In my case, the system decided to move all the notifications (bluetooth, network icon, volume icon) to the far right and displace my User name drop down button and date/time just to the right of the notifications. When you’re used to the placement of the User name dropdown, it’s not easy to just get used to it’s new location.

Many forum users may misunderstand your question on how to fix this and tell you to right click and choose move. Unfortunately the notification icons don’t give you a “move” option. It would seem that the notification icons are within an invisible tray. Now, it is that tray itself that’s been moved and not so much the icons (it’s just that when the tray is moved, it moves all that the icons it holds) I realized this only after removing all but one notification icon and right clicked just a little bit left of the remaining notification icon and noticed a move option. I moved it and *SNAP* the time/date and User name dropdown button went right back to where they originally were.

So quick steps:

**The following step is just to make it easier to click the notification tray***
1. Go to System>Startup Programs>
*at this point just remove what you see as notifications in the panel. Default for me was Volume, Network, Bluetooth

2. There should be a blank space to the right of date/time and the User name button.

3. Right click and move it to the left of date/time and the User name button.

4. Now you just add back the icons you removed.

Hopefully this helps. Sorry if it’s convoluted. But when you can’t find answers on the web and what you do find are just “Thanks we’re submitting this questioning or developers” … this may help