As far as I know... to change the size of the Panel in Unity you should edit the Source Code.

NOTE: In this example I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity 5.20.0

Download & Edit Unity Source Code.

1) Make sure you have enable the Source code repository

• Open Ubuntu Software Center.


• In the Menu Bar choose Edit -> Software Sources. Click to enable "Source code repository".


• Just in case I use the "Main Server" to Download.

2) Open a Terminal and install the necessary packages.

• sudo apt-get install build-essential

3) Install build dependencies.

• sudo apt-get build-dep unity

4) Create a folder to download the source code.

• mkdir ~/Downloads/src




• cd ~/Downloads/src

5) Download the source code.

• apt-get source unity

6) Edit the the files "PanelStyle.cpp" & "PanelIndicatorEntryView.cpp"

• gedit unity-5.20.0/plugins/unityshell/src/PanelStyle.cpp

Search for the line "63" and change it.
eg:(In my case I changed it from 24 to 42)

Before:

: panel_height(24)

After:

: panel_height(42)

• gedit unity-5.20.0/plugins/unityshell/src/PanelIndicatorEntryView.cpp

Search for the lines "208" & "215" and change them.
eg: (In my case I changed them from 22 to 24)

Before:

pixbuf = gtk_icon_theme_load_icon(theme, proxy_->image_data().c_str(), 22,



GtkIconInfo* info = gtk_icon_theme_lookup_by_gicon(theme, icon, 22,

After:

pixbuf = gtk_icon_theme_load_icon(theme, proxy_->image_data().c_str(), 24,



GtkIconInfo* info = gtk_icon_theme_lookup_by_gicon(theme, icon, 24,

7) Go to the "unity-5.20.0" folder to build the deb packages.

• cd unity-5.20.0/


• dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b

8) Now you can install the deb packages.

• cd ..




• sudo dpkg -i *deb

9) increase the font size from 11 to 12.

• gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name 'Ubuntu 12'

10) Finally you can logout and Login or Restart to see the changes.

Before:

After:

Hope it helps.