You’re not a Gwibber fan, Evolution is not your bag and you – this one writes itself folks – have no empathy for Empathy messenger yet all show in the Ubuntu Messaging Menu.

If you want to clean up your Ubuntu messaging Menu without resorting to nuclear options – perhaps to stop Gwibber annoying the hell out of you on a lazy Sunday afternoon after – you can.

Robert ‘PsyberS‘ Dyer  sent in a nifty ‘hack’ for blacklisting specific applications from using the Messaging Menu.

Remove entries from the Ubuntu Messaging Menu

You’ll probably have to make the directory first:

mkdir -p ~/.config/indicators/messages/applications-blacklist/

Files in this directory should contain paths to launchers (.desktop files).  Any file in this directory is read on startup and all launchers found are blacklisted.

I symlink to the shared indicator applications configs, which all exist in:

/usr/share/indicators/messages/applications

So for example, to block Evolution I do:

ln -s /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/evolution ~/.config/indicators/messages/applications-blacklist/evolution

Then when I restart the indicator applet, no more Evolution entries!

Thanks PsyberS

messagingmenu tips