How do I/is it possible to remove the Broadcast option from the messaging indicator?

Question

I would like to remove an applet from the GNOME panel/indicator applet (the Gwibber/broadcasting applet, to be precise) in Unity mode.

Is this possible?

If so, would any techniques also apply to other applets that other programs may place there?

Answer 1

What I did was create the folder ~/.config/indicators/messages/applications-blacklist. Then inside it, I created a text file called gwibber.indicator with only one line:

/usr/share/applications/gwibber.desktop

Now log out and back in (or kill and restart the panel) and you should see the broadcast item is gone.

The authoritative source for this is here. It explains how to blacklist items on the messaging menu by using the above procedure. One thing that is perhaps not explained is how to find the right name to use for the text file (why gwibber.indicator instead of just gwibber for example) and how to find the path to the desktop file.

To find the name, you can simply ls /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications. The desktop path should be like the one for the gwibber example above, but you can ls /usr/share/applications/ to check it's there.

To add your own application to the messaging menu, you need to create a folder:

mkdir ~/.config/indicators/messages/applications

Then put a text file with the a path to the application's desktop file; I think you can pick any name here.

References:

• Remove "Set Up Mail" and other entries from the message indicator?