Resetting XFCE Panels to default settings

XFCE stores it's configuration for the running session in xfconfd. Feel free to back up the files you're going to delete first.

1. Shut down the panel first, xfce4-panel --quit

2. Kill the xfce4 configuration daemon, pkill xfconfd

3. First delete settings for the panel, rm -rf ~/.config/xfce4/panel

4. Clear out the settings for xfconfd, rm -rf ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml

5. Restart the panel, run xfce4-panel. This will respawn xfconfd automatically. Note if you need or want to restart xfconfd manually know that on my installation it was in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/xfconf/xfconfd which was outside of $PATH.

This clears it for the running session, regenerates the files, and sets up the default for future sessions.

Want it in one line?

xfce4-panel --quit ; pkill xfconfd ; rm -rf ~/.config/xfce4/panel ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml ; xfce4-panel;