Customize indicators on mate indicator applet on ubuntu 18.04

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hello!

I found this guide https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-mate-customization/ where, regarding to this doubt I have, it says “Right click on any applet on the panel. You will see a popup menu. You can move any applet on the panel or remove them from there. Some of the applets also have additional options — like Edit, Preferences etc. After you are finished with the adjustments, you might also want to lock them to the panel.”

But in the new version of mate (1.20.1) I can’t find the way to Edit or change the preferences so that I can, for example, remove some of the elements (sound, network, session or any other) which are part of the indicator mate applet.

Thank you in advance

#2

The Indicator Applet is always added as Indicator Applet Complete

indicator-applet

which is one monolith big wide applet:

indicators1604

I can’t remove its items even on Ubuntu MATE 16.04.5 LTS. It seems to be by design.

#3

Yes. Darn right it’s by design. It seems to be part of a trend to forcibly remove decisions from the user and give them to developers. It reeks of “Microsoft WinThink”.

#4

Well, I wrongly thought that I could edit the indicator applet when I used Ubuntu 16.04. My memory failed. In addition you can make some indicators to disappear from the Indicator Applet just by disabling them from startup graphically through “mate-session-properties”, or creating a .desktop file in ~/.config/autostart

Personally I didn’t want to have the session indicator so I take a look at this file /usr/share/mate/autostart/indicator-session.desktop to prevent /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-session/indicator-session-service to start with mate session.

#5

16.04 did not have indicator applet. It used the tried and true Notification Area applet. In 18.04 you can remove the indicator applet and use the Notification Area instead. Look under System Tools in the menu and see if you have the dConf Editor. If not, you can download it in Synaptic or in a terminal by typing

sudo apt install dconf-editor

Once you have it it should show up in your System Tools menu. Run it. Click the search icon (a magnifying glass). type in

enable-sni-support

A button to turn sni support on appears. Turn it on. Now you can remove the indicator applet from the panel and add the Notification applet back. And now you are rocking just like you were in 16.04!

#6

I’m using 16.04 still as I don’t agree with many aspects of 18.04 and I’m currently running the Indicator Applet Complete 1.16.0.

I just added it to the panel like any other applet. The notification area applet is a horrible old thing now…

#7

Try to look here Tip on re-ordering the indicators
and here Annoying messenger and power applets switch off
Alternatively you could uninstall any of the indicators. To get the name just look into autostart applications. Unfortunately it is not enough to just remove them from autostart.

1 Like