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One of our readers wrote to me, “I have installed CentOS on my System, and I’m facing difficulty to minimize and maximize Windows because the Default button to Maximize and Minimize is not available on the top right of the screen just a single Close button is available.

It’s very annoying to switch to different applications every time I need to press Super Button to choose the application or right-click on top of the applications and do minimize.”

This incident reported by our readers who have recently installed CentOS 8 Stream on his system, and I assured him to resolve this issue by mail itself.

It’s quite common for Ubuntu, CentOS, RedHat, Fedora, OpenSUSE to ship with Default Gnome Desktop Environment.

In OpenSUSE, you are allowed to choose a different desktop environment while Installing, but for others, you don’t have the options.

If it is your first experience with Linux, you will miss the Default button to Minimize and Maximize. To get back to the standard button, you need to follow my instructions and you will see the options.

Prerequisites

• Privilege account (sudo users)
• Terminal
• Gnome Desktop Environment

How the problem look like

This is my terminal screen where you can see only the Close button, and you will not find the Minimize and Maximize buttons.

In this guide article, we are up to solve this issue and get back to the Minimize and Maximize button on the title bar.

You can resolve this issue using by terminal method or GUI. It’s up to you which method you prefer to choose.

Command-line Method

I personally use this method to configure or get back Minimize and Maximize button on Titlebar, and even you can perform this method without sudo access.

It is very simple. You just need to do copy-paste the below command, and boom, all the buttons will show up.

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout ":minimize,maximize,close"

The above command is not only used to bring back buttons. You can also configure button positions.

If you want to have all buttons on the top left side of Title-bar pass the below commands:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout "close,minimize,maximize:"

That’s all to get back Minimize and Maximize button on the title bar using the command method, isn’t that simple?

GUI Method

This is another method. If you don’t want to use a command-line method, you can use the below step to get back Minimize and Maximize button.

For this method, you will require to have root access to Download and Install gnome-tweak tools.

Install Gnome Tweaks tools

First, we need to install Gnome Tweaks tools into our system. Before that, once check whether Tweaks tools are already installed. To check Tweaks tools, press the Super Key and search for “Tweaks”, If it is installed, you can skip this step.

In my case, I didn’t find the “Tweaks”, so I’ll download and install them from the terminal, pass the below command, or do-copy paste:

For Ubuntu & Debian user

$ sudo apt install gnome-tweaks -y

For CentOS/ RHEL/ Fedora user

$ sudo yum -y install gnome-tweak-tool

Configure Windows

Once the “gnome-tweaks tool” is installed, you can run this application from the terminal itself using gnome-tweaks command or Press the Super key and search for “Tweaks”.

You will get several options to customize the gnome envirnoment as per your preference, but now we are interested in getting the back Maximize and Minimize Button on Title-bar.

To get that go to Windows tabs on the left side which will show you multiple options to customize; on the bottom, you will see the options Titlebar Button

Turn on both options Maximize and Minimize to get Button on Titlebar.

As soon as you turn on this button, you will see Buttons on the title bar.

Wrap Up

That’s all my friend to get Minimize and Maximize button in Gnome. In case you need some assistance from my end, feel free to comment Down.

I want to hear which method you choose to get the back Button, and please write it down in the comment section.

If you want to share some feedback or any topic feel free to comment down.