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fouric
Asked: 2015-04-03 09:50:19 +0800 CST

How do I add or manipulate Application/System Indicators in the login screen?

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I would like to remove several of the Indicators that usually appear in the upper-right-hand side of the login screen. In particular, I would like to remove the accessibility, keyboard layout, power, and sound indicators, although it would be nice to know how to generically add or remove indicators. How can I do this?

indicator

2 Answers

  1. One way that I have tried in Ubuntu 14.04 using LightDM (Default); Using Some config files stored in /usr/share/unity/indicators/

    Let's say you want to hide keyboard indicator:

    1. Open corresponding file for editing

      sudo nano /usr/share/unity/indicators/com.canonical.indicator.keyboard

    2. Comment object paths for the mode you want to hide in, example this will hide it in the greeting screen and lock screen

      [Indicator Service]
Name=indicator-keyboard
ObjectPath=/com/canonical/indicator/keyboard
Position=80

[desktop]
ObjectPath=/com/canonical/indicator/keyboard/desktop

#[desktop_greeter]
#ObjectPath=/com/canonical/indicator/keyboard/desktop_greeter

#[desktop_lockscreen]
#ObjectPath=/com/canonical/indicator/keyboard/desktop_lockscreen

[ubiquity]
ObjectPath=/com/canonical/indicator/keyboard/desktop

    3. Reboot or just restart display manager

      sudo service lightdm restart
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  2. Best Answer

    Coming with different approach:

    $ pstree
init─┬─...
     ├─lightdm─┬─Xorg
     │         ├─lightdm─┬─lightdm-greeter───unity-greeter───4*[{unity-greeter}]
     ...

$ dpkg -L unity-greeter
...
/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.canonical.unity-greeter.gschema.xml
...

$ more /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.canonical.unity-greeter.gschema.xml

...
    <key name="indicators" type="as">
      <default>['ug-accessibility', 'com.canonical.indicator.keyboard', 'com.canonical.indicator.session', 'com.canonical.indicator.datetime', 'com.canonical.indicator.
power', 'com.canonical.indicator.sound', 'application']</default>
      <summary>Which indicators to load</summary>
    </key>
...

    unity-greeter is run by lightdm user! Instead of looking around for a way to change the dconf setting for that ghost user. I override the default. Tested in Ubuntu 14.04 64bit (VirtualBox).

    1. Create new dconf override file

      sudo nano /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/90_unity-greeter.gschema.override

      Put these two lines in it with indicator you want to keep:

      [com.canonical.unity-greeter]
indicators=['com.canonical.indicator.session']

      Default is:

      ['ug-accessibility', 'com.canonical.indicator.keyboard', 'com.canonical.indicator.session', 'com.canonical.indicator.datetime', 'com.canonical.indicator.power', 'com.canonical.indicator.sound', 'application']

    2. Recompile glib schemas

      sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

    3. Restart the display manager

      sudo service lightdm restart
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