Applications not showing in Unity Dash

I am running Ubuntu 12.04 on an IBM ThnkPad T42. I just installed Gnome and Cinnamon but I am still using Unity. The only problem is that in dash when I search for any application they don't appear. I don't see recent applications either. I fixed it by running unity --reset but the next time I turned on my computer it was broken again

Solution 1:

Reinstall unity-lens-applications and unity-lens-files logged out and back in and it should work.

Solution 2:

This worked for me:

1. Switch to tty1 (Ctrl+Alt+F1) and login as myself.
2. rm -rf ~/.compiz (in order to recursively delete session logs... there might also be ~/.compiz-1 and so on, delete them all!)
3. sudo service lightdm restart
4. login using the standard greeter again.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/943083/comments/14

Solution 3:

The Unity Dash shows applications which have .desktop shortcuts in /usr/share/applications/ or ~/.local/share/applications/. So ensure that the application has a .desktop shortcut in at least one of these two folders.