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lofidevops
Asked: 2011-07-26 01:29:46 +0800 CST

Can I blacklist an appindicator?

  • 772

I've whitelisted some indicators for apps that don't yet have Unity-compliant appindicators. Is there any way to blacklist appindicators for apps that are Unity-compliant (not old-style indicators) but don't provide a "Don't show in the system tray" option?

  • Any working solutions to ban an appindicator from being displayed, GUI- or CLI-based, are welcome.
  • A valid alternative would be a way to hide the indicator in a similar fashion to how you can show/hide system tray icons in Windows 7. According to the answer to this closed question this is not currently possible in Ubuntu.
  • Techniques that cover old indicators as well as new indicators are also valid. (Removing items from the systray-whitelist only works for old indicators.)
unity

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    To not load an applet just prevent it from running.

    If the indicator is coded in to the application and the application does not give you an option to remove the indicator from the panel you wont be able to omit it, you cannot omit an application indicator that is build in to the code and has no option to disable it, for that you need source code changes either made by you or you can suggest them to the app developer, which is the last case will be depend on which applications your are referring to.

    There are no specific guidelines explaining if and application should or should not have an inductor applet, only what an indicator applet should do.

    You can still remove the system applets made by gnome for you system or if the application it self uses an external applet to be used as a indicator.

    To remove one of the gnome / unity indicators that are visible by default open the terminal and run this command to show all the applications that can be loaded at start up

    cd /etc/xdg/autostart/ && ls

    Identify the applet that you want to prevent from loading and edit it with your favorite text editor, ie:

    sudo nano nm-applet.desktop

    Locate the line with these contents

    NoDisplay=true

    and change it to

    NoDisplay=false

    Save and close the terminal.

    Click the cog weel in the top right corner of the screen next to your username and select Startup Applications..., now you will see the application that you just edited the .desktop file and you can disable it.

    The applet wont load on next boot

    After enabling or disabling and applet following the steps above you will see that each .desktop that you modify will create it's own .desktop file in your ~/.config/autostart folder.

    If an applet indicator that you want to disable does not show on your startup list you need to use the method above, else there will be a .desktop file inside ~/.config/autostart that can be edited with the described method and will then be possible to enabled/disabled in the startup applications.

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  2. Most probably indicators you don't want to see, shouldn't be there in the first place according to the design guidelines. So the right course of action (right now) should be to contact the author.

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  3. Does your app (that is missing the option) appear in the global panel? - I think, if yes, it is whitelisted and you have to take it out of the systray-whitelist = blacklisting... ;)

    So if app "appMissing" resists in the panel your systray-whitelist is (something like)

        #~> gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist
    ['appA', 'appB', 'appMissing']

    and you have to blacklist "appMissing" by doing

        #~> gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['appA', 'appB']"
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  4. Some icons in the system tray can be disabled by unity tweak tool. You should go to panel section and uncheck options, there.

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