How to disable lenses in the Dash menu?

There are several ways to do this, though one would think the easiest thing for ubuntu to do would be to have some easy to access configuration options from within the dash, but that's just crazy talk.

If you're confident using the terminal then I recommend option 1, because the behaviour of the software center will be misleading and confusing.

Option 1 - Use the Terminal (Recommended)

1. Open the terminal Ctrl+Shift+T

2. To check what scopes and lenses are currently installed, use dpkg with grep. e.g. list all scopes and lens packages

   $ dpkg -l | egrep "(unity-lens-|unity-scope-)"
   ii  unity-lens-applications     ...     Application lens for unity
   ii  unity-lens-files            ...     File lens for unity
   ii  unity-lens-gwibber          ...     Gwibber Lens for unity
   ii  unity-lens-photos           ...     Unity Photos Lens
   ii  unity-lens-shopping         ...     Shopping lens for unity
   

   Notes on 14.04

   14.04 has a great many more lenses and scopes than ever before. Some of which can't removed without destroying the system e.g. unity-scope-home.

   These are some of the scopes and lenses installed by default in 14.04:

   unity-lens-video
   unity-lens-friends
   unity-scope-audacious 
   unity-scope-calculator 
   unity-scope-chromiumbookmarks 
   unity-scope-clementine 
   unity-scope-colourlovers 
   unity-scope-devhelp 
   unity-scope-firefoxbookmarks 
   unity-scope-gdrive 
   unity-scope-gmusicbrowser 
   unity-scope-gourmet 
   unity-scope-guayadeque 
   unity-scope-home 
   unity-scope-manpages 
   unity-scope-musicstores 
   unity-scope-musique 
   unity-scope-openclipart 
   unity-scope-texdoc 
   unity-scope-tomboy 
   unity-scope-video-remote 
   unity-scope-virtualbox 
   unity-scope-yelp 
   unity-scope-zotero
   

   Scopes and leneses after most of the one's that can be removed have been removed:

   $ dpkg -l | egrep "(unity-lens-|unity-scope-)"
   ii  unity-lens-applications ... Application lens for unity
   ii  unity-lens-files        ... File lens for unity
   ii  unity-scope-home        ... Home scope that aggregates results from multiple scopes
   

   • What do the various dpkg flags like 'ii' 'rc' mean?

3. To remove a lens use apt-get remove. e.g. remove the unity shopping lens:

   sudo apt-get remove --purge unity-lens-shopping 
   

Option 2 - Use Ubuntu Software Center

1. Open up Software Center and search for "lens".

2. Uninstall by selecting the item and clicking "Remove".

   IMPORTANT!

   • You must select Show (count) technical items to show all installed lenses. e.g. The "shopping lens" is a technical item, which personally I think is a little bit cheeky. You know, because you're too dumb to know what that is.

   • Don't select "Installed" and then search for "lens". This doesn't do what you might expect. It should list any "installed" len's, however it doesn't do that. Probably a bug.

What lenses do I recommend uninstalling?

All of them except for unity-lens-applications and possibly unity-lens-files. Personally I'd be happy a great deal happier without the dash. In place of which was a simple, straight forward, no messing, fast-as-possible, application launcher. I can't belive I'm about to say this, but there's actually something I miss about windows.

Note on 14.04 You can't remove unity-scope-home without remove the unity-desktop and breaking the entire system.

Additional Information

• I have permanent connections to Canonical servers, what are they for?

If you're using Ubuntu 13.04 or newer:

sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

In the tweak tool you can use the search tab to modify the relevant settings:

• Uncheck "Search online sources"
• Uncheck "Show more suggestions"
• Uncheck "Enable search of your files"

Uninstalling the lenses does not work in 14.04.

What works is:

• install dconf-editor
• remove scopes from the strings in com -> canonical -> unity -> dash. I left only home.scope in there.
• logout, login, enjoy.

(From here)

You can also do it without installing dconf-editor. Edit the string with double quotes to your liking:

$ dconf write /com/canonical/unity/dash/scopes "['home.scope', 'applications.scope', 'files.scope']"

(From here)

Here's a small package I whipped up if you're comfortable with either setsid unity or logging out

In Ubuntu 14.04LTS

1. Press Super-A to bring up the Applications Scope
2. Scroll until you see the Dash Plugins Header
3. If not already clicked, click the Show more results button
4. For each plugin you'd like to disable, click it, then click disable

I prefer this method because it doesn't require super-user privileges, thus, it is less likely to break anything.

I would imaging that the easiest way of doing this would be to uninstall it, logout and login. It would still be in the cache if you would like to install it again later on.

If you on the other hand do not want to uninstall it and want to just make it go away from the Dash you could just move it out of the /usr/share/unity/lenses folder.

For example let us say you have install the Askubuntu Lense like me.

you would then have a folder inside /usr/share/unity/lenses called extras-unity-lens-askubuntu/. Move that folder somewhere else. Logout. Login.

An example:

cd /usr/share/unity/lenses
sudo mv extras-unity-lens-askubuntu/ ..

This would move the askubuntu lense from the lense folder to the parent folder. If you logout/login, the askubuntu lense will be gone.

UPDATE - As aking1012 points out, typing setsid unity will "refresh" Unity with the changes.

Just open the terminal and exec this (without sudo):

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses disabled-scopes "['more_suggestions-amazon.scope', 'more_suggestions-u1ms.scope', 'more_suggestions-populartracks.scope', 'music-musicstore.scope', 'more_suggestions-ebay.scope', 'more_suggestions-ubuntushop.scope', 'more_suggestions-skimlinks.scope']"