How do I disable the chameleon effect in notifications and the Unity launcher?

Notifications

The chameleon effect can be removed from the notifications but it is quite an involved process involving installing an older version of the notify-osd package, a comprehensive guide can be found here: https://askubuntu.com/a/128508/40955 then the notifications will be the same dark colour as they were in 11.10 (or you can choose a custom colour)

Launcher

The instructions below currently do not work, due to Bug #975350

You can force the launcher to stay one colour and not change to imitate the wallpaper colour by installing the MyUnity tweaking tool from the Ubuntu Software Centre.

When installed navigate to the Launcher tab and click the color bar

Select your preferred colour from the colour wheel and the launcher will remain that colour no matter what the wallpaper colour is.

The chameleon effect cannot be turned off without reverting the source changes that enabled it.

Atm the means to alter the color used does not work, seen here in bug report though in one of the dupes a dev marked it as a wishlist which is curious https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/975350

Additionally, even when working you are not able to use #000000 which would allow for a non-colored launcher, bug report here - https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/924586

If the former bug is fixed you can achieve a near colorless launcher by setting a single color (r,b, or g) to a value of 1, adjusting the opacity to suit & using "Edge Illumination .." for launcher icons

If both bugs are fixed then you can use #000000 with some opacity to remove the colored effect

Update - both bugs now have a proposed fix up for review. Have tested here & now a custom color can be set including #000000 which depending on opacity set can negate the 'colored' effect

For 12.04 & 12.10

To stop the dash and launcher to use the same color of the wallpaper. You can use CompizConfig Settings Manager to override this behavior.

• Open CompizConfig Settings Manager
  
• Search for Ubuntu Unity Plugin and open it.
  
• Click on Experimental tab
  
• Now click Background Color option and enter your desired color for dash & launcher.

Normal Behavior

After applying the changes

following script used as a startup application can do a fix. gconftool has to be called twice to trigger setting change:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

# wait until unity starts
while [ ! "$(pidof unity-panel-service)" ]; do sleep 1; done

# try reconfigure bg color
sleep 2
gconftool --set /apps/compiz-1/plugins/unityshell/screen0/options/background_color --type=string '#050505EE'
sleep 2
gconftool --set /apps/compiz-1/plugins/unityshell/screen0/options/background_color --type=string '#0A0A0AFF'

The option is currently broken in 12.04. Custom color settings last only until you do anything else after setting

Bug report, fix proposed on https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/975350