7

I installed Telegram Messenger from source, but now there are Telegram and Telegram Desktop in the Unity Launcher. Has someone any clue how to remove one of these?

2
  • What do you mean by Launchpad? This? launchpad.net if so, what does it have to do with what you installed? If not, can you clarify?
    – dadexix86
    Jul 6, 2016 at 8:25
  • Most likely, you started the first time from cli and locked it to the launcher, right? Jul 6, 2016 at 8:27

3 Answers 3

5

For some reason, Telegram makes two .desktop files when installed; one in /usr/share/applications and one in ~/.local/share/applications

I now just rename the local one so that it isn't read:

mv ~/.local/share/applications/telegramdesktop.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/telegram

This immediately kills the second icon.

You may have to repeat when Telegram updates itself, as it will regenerate the file

1
  • 3
    I wouldn't suggest him to remove the global one, if it exists, nor to edit it! First copy locally before editing! Jul 6, 2016 at 8:29
2

Right click the unwanted one and choose unlock from launcher. This approach will remove it from the launcher but should be risk free and doesn't require editing anything.

0

It seems that whenever you launch the Telegram Desktop app, it will automatically generate the file org.telegram.desktop._<some_id>.desktop under the ~/.local/share/applications folder. Note that the one in /usr/share/applications will have the root privilege to generate that file.

There's a Linux feature called "immutable bit" provided by the chattr command, which can be used to make a file unable to be deleted, even by root. So here are the steps to stop the auto-creation of that duplicated launcher:

  1. Open the file org.telegram.desktop._<some_id>.desktop which is under ~/.local/share/applications, delete all its contents.
  2. Set the immutable bit on that file:
sudo chattr +i ~/.local/share/applications/org.telegram.desktop._<some_id>.desktop
  1. Start the Telegram Desktop app, now it will not be able to create or rewrite the duplicated launcher.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .