Xubuntu / Xfce sync whisker menu favourites

I use a dual monitor setup. For each monitor I have a panel, and each panel has a whisker menu. I found that the favourites section of each of these panels is not synchronised. To fix this, I wrote a simple script.

First, you have to decide which whisker config to keep.

$ cd ~/.config/xfce4/panel/
$ ls
whiskermenu-1.rc  whiskermenu-9.rc

The favourites menu is stored at the top of each file, like this:

$ head -n1 whiskermenu-1.rc
favorites=firefox.desktop,google-chrome.desktop,hexchat.desktop,exo-file-manager.desktop,libreoffice-writer.desktop,libreoffice-calc.desktop,exo-terminal-emulator.desktop

Find the one you want to keep. From this point on, replace whiskermenu-1.rc with the config you want to keep and whiskermenu-9.rc with the one you want to ditch.

The script is as simple as this:

#! /bin/bash

rm -f ~/.config/xfce4/panel/whiskermenu-9.rc
cp ~/.config/xfce4/panel/whiskermenu-1.rc ~/.config/xfce4/panel/whiskermenu-9.rc
xfce4-panel -r

If you save that to /usr/local/bin/syncwhisker, then you can use “syncwhisker” in the terminal to keep your menus the same.