Howto: Remove menu entries from the System menu

August 4, 2006 at 10:05 am | Posted in tips and tricks, xubuntu | 23 Comments

With the built-in menu editor, you cannot remove menu entries from the System menu. Here’s how:

1) Go to the /usr/share/applications folder. Copy and paste in the terminal (Xfce menu > System > Terminal):

cd /usr/share/applications

2) This folder should be full of .desktop files. To see how many there are, type

ls

Say the one you want to edit is Firefox. Copy and paste into the terminal:

sudo mousepad firefox.desktop

3) In the bottom of the file, paste the following:

NoDisplay=true

Save and exit. Now Firefox won’t show up in the System menu. You can do this with any program.

23 Comments »

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  1. Thanks for the hint. But what do you do with menu entries which do not show up in /usr/share/applications (e.g., apps installed via wine)? Any idea?

    Comment by TomS— December 16, 2006 #

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  2. To create an entry, use another .desktop as a template and modify it with the correct name and path for the program you want to run, then save it as “new_program_name.desktop” (where new_program_name is the program you wanted in your menu).

    Comment by dacovale— December 23, 2006 #

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  3. extra tip: not all .desktop files are under /usr/share/applications.

    do ” locate *.desktop” to find them all

    i wanted to remove some “Root Shell” icon, and it was found in /home/rob/.kde/share/apps/konsole/su.desktop 🙂

    Comment by rob— January 2, 2007 #

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  4. Heya, had some real issues trying to find azureus, i added using alacarte, but then it jsut disapeared but stayed in sys menu, turns out it went to .local/share/applications/Azureus.desktop , was case sensitive, so i didn’t find it for a while -_-“

    Comment by Noirenex— February 16, 2007 #

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  5. Hi, the menu entries are located in .desktop file.
    After installing a bunch of program using wine, I found out that after install them, they were still in the menu entries under the category “Other” (I’m using Ubunut).

    What I did was:
    sudo locaet *.desktop
    and locate delete those entries you don’t want to appear in the menu.
    Just make backup in case.

    If the list is too long you can use this command:
    sudo locate *.desktop > ~/Desktop/menu
    and search for it in the menu file on you desktop

    Comment by OunSu— July 20, 2007 #

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  6. Correction: I’s using xubuntu, not ubuntu

    Comment by OunSu— July 20, 2007 #

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  7. It’s better to just use “sudo locate *.desktop | less” rather than possibly overwrite a file in your home directory, and at the very least create an unnecessary extra file.

    Comment by sulphur— September 28, 2007 #

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  8. as OunSu im also using xubuntu, and ive found some shortcuts that shows in the category “Other” (that wine is using) in this directory:

    ~/.local/share/applications/wine/

    sorry if my english is bad, im from sweden 🙂

    Comment by tommy— November 8, 2007 #

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    • ~/.local/share/applications

      Chromium installs application “bookmarks” (for desktop) in there. Took me hours to find out. Thanks. Xubuntu needs a proper menu editor…

      Comment by Ari R— January 5, 2012 #

      Reply

  9. Thanks for your comment there, tommy. It was helpful where the others failed. I wish I had read your comment first instead of trying everything else and coming up with nothing. Apparently the files I was looking for were not .desktop files. ^_^;;;

    Comment by ami— November 19, 2007 #

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  10. I second that. Tommys’ solution solved my wine issue. Thanks.

    Comment by MockY— December 30, 2007 #

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  11. I would like to thank Tommy as well. Check your ~/.local/applications folder

    Thank you

    Comment by Tsvi M— May 16, 2008 #

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  12. I have xubuntu.
    How do I locate ~/.local/share/applications/wine/

    Comment by TN— May 22, 2008 #

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  13. Never mind.
    I found out that you have to show hidden files before you can locate .local

    Comment by TN— May 22, 2008 #

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  15. Tommy, your tip did the trick!!! 😀

    thanks a lot.

    Ps. Your English is perfect, you should hear my Swedish 😉

    Comment by afecelis— July 14, 2008 #

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  17. It is healthy, I shall come on your site more often, thank.,

    Comment by Cherie— November 27, 2008 #

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  18. Thanks Tommy!

    Comment by mk— January 15, 2009 #

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  19. Tack Tommy!

    Comment by Zwopper— March 25, 2009 #

    Reply

  20. Excellent post. Thank you!

    Comment by Pieter Marres— January 9, 2011 #

    Reply

  21. […] à Tommy, un lecteur du Xubuntu Blog pour cette information. Posted in […]

    Pingback by Menu caché dans Xubuntu— February 28, 2011 #

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  22. The best idea is to go to ‘tools->catfish file searcher’ followed by selecting the ‘options’ icon and selecting ‘hidden files’. You can then search for .desktop in your home folder or from the root folder. You can check the contents of the file by dragging the file (name) to a terminal and execute the ‘cat ‘ command.

    Comment by Tux the Ravin Penguin— August 12, 2015 #

    Reply

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