How do I disable overlay scrollbars?

In 12.04 LTS there's a slightly cleaner way to do it. Just run

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface ubuntu-overlay-scrollbars false

in a terminal. Apps opened afterwards will have the non-ayatana scrollbar.

To get the default behavior back, run

gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface ubuntu-overlay-scrollbars

If you are using 12.10 or later, run

gsettings set com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode normal

And to return to the default, run

gsettings reset com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode

You can disable the scrollbars either

  • For your user:

    Add the line

      export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0
    

    to the file ~/.xprofile (create one, if it doesn't exist).

  • Or globally:

    Create a file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/99disable-overlay-scrollbars and add above line (requires root permissions, see this answer about how to create a file as root).

  • Or per application:

    • Is there a way to blacklist an individual application from using overlay-scrollbars?

You can remove the scrollbars completely by typing

sudo apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar liboverlay-scrollbar