On my laptop, where I have less screen real-estate than on my big desktop display, I like to set my (single) panel tall so the icons stack in two rows (I autohide so it doesn't get in the way). However, when I do this in Mate, the icons on the right (network, volume, notifications and so on), as well as those of most applets I add (for instance, the show desktop button) enlarge with the panel. If I set the panel to 50, which is my ideal size, they get ridiculous.

I'll clarify with some pictures.

This is how the panel looks by default

This is how it looks when I make it taller

This is a hastily cut-n-pasted version of how I want it to look

How do I achieve this?

Why not set up your Mate desktop with two bottom panels? Worked for me, but I don't hide my panels. Running Ubuntu 16.04 (pre-release)

Because then the top panel wastes almost all of its space. Menu on the left, wifi etc on the right, a whole lot of nothing in the middle. It makes more sense for everything to be on one panel to me.

I should have said two top panels. For some reason, I have an aversion to panels (or firefox tabs) on top. I stacked my right panel on top of my bottom panel (without adjusting icon spacings) for the attached screenshot

Attached Thumbnails