Question: Is there a way to turn off the boxes around the icons in Unity?

Clarification: I do **not** mean the backlight color -- there are plenty of questions about turning *that* off. I want the icons, and just the icons, to appear in the Unity bar, without any lights and shadows and borders. Can this be done?

Answer: 
The launcher icon overlays such as borders and highlights can be removed quite easily by changing 4 icon overlays in Unity.

1. Make a backup of the following image files in the folder
`/usr/share/unity/4/`:

```
launcher_icon_back_54.png
launcher_icon_edge_54.png
launcher_icon_glow_62.png
launcher_icon_shine_54.png

```
2. Either make your own transparent images of the same size or download the files at

```
wget -O transparent54.png "https://i.stack.imgur.com/MiFpK.png"
wget -O transparent62.png "https://i.stack.imgur.com/0NvP0.png"

```
3. Replace those 4 files with the same 4 files downloaded from the above link.
4. Restart unity by pressing `Alt`+`F2` and typing `setsid unity` (or logging out and in again).
5. If you don't like it then just replace the icons with the backed up icons and restart unity.

Example:

![Launcher with no borders around icons](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/495352/unity_launcher_no_borders.png)
I scripted the removal of the boxes around the applications and the one around the Ubuntu button (for 12.04):

```
cd /usr/share/unity/5
wget -O transparent54.png "https://i.stack.imgur.com/MiFpK.png"
wget -O transparent62.png "https://i.stack.imgur.com/0NvP0.png"

for name in squircle_shine squircle_edge squircle_base squircle_base_selected launcher_icon_back launcher_icon_edge launcher_icon_shine
do 
    sudo mv ${name}_54.png ${name}_54.ori.png \
        && sudo ln -s transparent54.png ${name}_54.png
done

for name in squircle_shadow launcher_icon_glow launcher_icon_shadow
do 
    sudo mv ${name}_62.png ${name}_62.ori.png \
        && sudo ln -s transparent62.png ${name}_62.png
done

```

Then to restart Unity, press `Alt`+`F2` and run `setsid unity`. The result looks much cleaner to me. 

Before: 

[![with boxes](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E2MJ4.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E2MJ4.png)

After:

[![without boxes](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VAVV0.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VAVV0.png)

To switch back:

```
cd /usr/share/unity/5
for name in squircle_shine squircle_edge squircle_base squircle_base_selected launcher_icon_back launcher_icon_edge launcher_icon_shine
do 
    sudo rm ${name}_54.png \
        && sudo mv ${name}_54.ori.png ${name}_54.png
done

for name in squircle_shadow launcher_icon_glow launcher_icon_shadow
do 
    sudo rm ${name}_62.png \
        && sudo mv ${name}_62.ori.png ${name}_62.png
done

```