The GNOME Window Grouping Problem
In the standard Ubuntu desktop environment (GNOME), the launcher dock on the left side of the screen automatically groups multiple windows from the same application under a single icon. For example, if you have three separate terminal windows and two text documents open, you will only see one Terminal icon and one Text Editor icon in the dock. To access a specific window, you must click the icon and then wait for a visual preview to pop up so you can select the correct one. For heavy multitaskers, this extra click drastically slows down workflow.
How to Ungroup Windows Using the Terminal
While the basic Ubuntu Settings application does not provide a simple toggle for this behaviour, you can completely disable dock grouping by running a single command in the terminal to modify the dock’s hidden preferences.
1. Open your terminal by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T.
2. Copy and paste the following command exactly as written:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock click-action 'isolate'
3. Press Enter to execute the command.
Understanding the ‘Isolate’ Action
This command changes the underlying behaviour of the dock. By setting the click action to “isolate,” you are instructing the dock to immediately cycle through the open windows of that application every time you click the icon, completely bypassing the slow visual preview overlay. While the icons in the dock itself will still look like a single grouped icon, your interaction with them becomes instantly faster.
If you want to completely separate the icons in the dock visually so that three open terminal windows show up as three separate terminal icons on the screen, you will need to install a third-party GNOME extension, such as “Dash to Panel,” which offers a traditional, un-grouped Windows-style taskbar experience.