Double menu bar

I'm now getting the same issue in gnome-terminal so I guess its related to Unity in general.

I've added nvidia-graphics-drivers-352 as affected package because I only get the issue when using the NVIDIA videocard. I'm not getting the issue when running on integrated Intel graphics.

Since it affects multiple apps, it's probably not a per-app bug...

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I am experiencing double menubars with

Gallium 0.4 on AMD RS880 (DRM 2.43.0, LLVM 3.8.0).
OS Driver: RS880M [Mobility Radeon HD 4225/4250].

So, double menubars in VLC is not nVidia-specific. Nor am I having any similar issues in any other applications running on Unity.

Using the custom skin option removes the symptom at the expense of convenient access, and the interface doesn't fit the screen but gets shoved partway offscreen by the Unity launchbar, and it's not resizeable. Because this issue is primarily cosmetic, I think many VLC users are simply not bothering to report it. But it is annoying.

This is unbelievable! After I began posting this, I re-opened VLC to check something, and the double menubar has disappeared -- just now! I had just viewed a video a half-hour ago and the symptom was present. Now it's gone!

Will report if it returns again...

Double menubars in VLC returned with repeated test openings of different video files. It doesn't seem to be file format-specific, occurs with OGV, MP4, WMV formats. It seems it may be related to the default window position. VLC un-maximized always opens partly off-screen in Unity (res 1366x768), too low and offset to the right of the screen edge, which I repeatedly have to move the window into position manually. Will report if I can discern any pattern of actions that trigger the double menubars.

I believe I have found a reliable method of replicating the VLC double menubar on my system.

It reliably appears upon leaving fullscreen (hotkey F) to restore the window. I can maximize and restore the window size repeatedly without the issue appearing, but once I select fullscreen, it returns when the window is restored (either maximized or unmaximized.)

This bug does not depend on nvidia cards.
I can reproduce it with VLC (go fullscren and then back to window mode) on a Intel i5-3317U and a AMD R9 280 (both use open source driver).
It sometimes appears for terminal as well, but only in a virtual machine (Windows 7 Host + VirtualBox 5.0.20).

New discovery in the VLC double menu syndrome: Turning "Minimal interface" on and off by pressing Ctl-H several times on my system seems to reliably remove the menu in the Unity menubar, leaving the menu in the window titlebar. This appears to be the behavior despite my Unity System Settings > Appearance > Behavior settings for the menu to integrate in the Unity menubar. But at least the cosmetic annoyance can be fixed, at least persistently over several sessions, if not permanently.

Ctrl-H in VLC actually is a workaround for the double menu syndrome by removing the menu from the window titlebar.

I removed VLC and its addon modules, and installed SMPlayer, a frontend for MPlayer. On entering and exiting Fullscreen in SMPlayer, SMPlayer also displays double menus in the system menubar and the window titlebar.

This appears to be a Unity bug, related to toolkits used to build the interface.
SEE: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2226035

This should be my FINAL comment on double menubars in VLC and SMPlayer after switching back from fullscreen mode (hotkey F):

The following commands in Terminal or TTY appears to remove the symptoms, ONLY for the duration of the login session. I don't know if there is a significant difference between the two commands, but they both appear to have the same result.

initctl restart unity-panel-service
    or
restart unity-panel-service

This issue may be why Totem is the Ubuntu default player. :<

I just got double menu bards on totem and several other applications. Might be related to me trying to set up default app for handling magnet urls

xdg-mime default deluge.desktop x-scheme-handler/magnet
gvfs-mime --set x-scheme-handler/magnet deluge.desktop

As it also affected system in general as I think the default gtk libraries used by system have changed... (guake and few other apps is displayed in crude gtk2 style)

i uninstalled totem player (as its rubbish) and now vlc is giving me this same issue with double menus!

Ctrl-h isnt fixing it.

Any other find a work around for this bug?

Hey, guys, just install the new version of vlc, to resove this.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vlc

^ this solution doesn't work anymore

Running 16.04 in 2 different machines, one of which is affected by the bug and the other not.
I prefer to stay with Xenial since I admin a few family systems and the workload reduces over time with Xenial now in caretaker mode.

Each was installed at different times, the unaffected one having been installed almost from the first stable release and having been regularly updated, the affected one having been installed a few weeks ago from an iso saved about 2 years ago and updated at install and regularly since.

The unaffected machine is a 14 inch Clevo laptop with i3 onboard graphics "Broadwell GT1", no special driver noted.
The affected machine is an ASRock mini hybrid desktop affair with i5 onboard graphics "HD Graphics 530 (Skylake GT2)", no special driver noted.

Both are running the same official package 2.2.2-5ubuntu0.16.04.4

Thanks to rtimai's work on this bug, I've given the user a simple shortcut to restart the Unity session - per comment 14
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/1542519/comments/14

This is a small burden for such a great version as Xenial with unity has been.