Here is how to remove Evolution from the Indicator Applet notifier in the system tray in Ubuntu 10.04. Open a terminal and enter:
sudo apt-get remove evolution-indicator
If you’re like me and have no need of any of the messaging notifications, you can get rid of them all with:
sudo apt-get remove indicator-messages
If you also want to get rid of the MeMenu, you can do so with this:
sudo apt-get remove indicator-me
The mail notifier (or anything else you’ve removed) might still be there when you’ve finished, though should be gone after a reboot. However, to view your changes immediately, you can refresh the panel by entering the following into a terminal (or Alt+F2):
unity (if using the default Unity desktop)
killall gnome-panel (if using Gnome 2.x “Classic”)
Another way to achieve this (without refreshing the whole panel) is to right-click the applet and choose Remove From Panel, then right-click an empty area of the panel, choose Add to Panel, then drag Indicator Applet to next to the clock in the system tray, or wherever you want to put it instead (this is only if using Gnome 2.x “Classic”).
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Remove the Volume Button from the Indicator Applet in Ubuntu’s Panel
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To update whatever changes you’ve made to the gnome-panel, e.g., the indicator applet, applications menus, etc., I do:
killall gnome-panel
When the panel restarts, it’ll be updated.
Yeah, I forgot you can killall on the panel and it will restart. Thanks, I’ll have to add it to the post. Cheers.
Thanks for this. This notification/indicator applet business gets worse with every release, it seems :( They’ve made a right mess of it. I do actually want some kind of notification of new mail in Evolution, and I’m trying to use Empathy in Lucid (though I’m not liking it), but the indicator applet is just hopeless. I’m so glad I can dump the really awful bit without losing my iBus, Bluetooth, battery and volume control! (the volume control is rubbish too, but I’m not sure what my options are there – more research required!).
cheers!
Glad I could help! I never liked that app, as it is useless with Thunderbird, though I hear it’s actually useless with Evolution too. After the upgrade to 10.04 and losing my volume button, I plonked the indicator back in the system tray, and sat there grimacing at the overly large spacing between notifiers. Glad I found the legacy volume app is still installed, so I’ve gotten rid of the Indicator Applet altogether:
https://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/restore-missing-volume-button-to-system-tray-after-upgrade-to-ubuntu-10-04/
Thanks again! I might seriously do this myself. I’d need to find a way to get some of the other indicators independently too, though. I’m probably going to ditch iBus in favour of good old SCIM anyway (though it might be that SCIM’s indicator applet has been rerouted to this flaming notification thing too), and perhaps I can live without a battery applet, but I’d still want to Bluetooth…
Hopefully this is a case of one step backwards to take two forwards. People *are* thinking, it seems (http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/24627/ looks *very* interesting), though I really don’t like the way this is going (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MessagingMenu/).
The annoying part is that I can’t simply remove it, since it’s so tightly ‘integrated’ with other applications (read: other applications have had their native functionality removed so as not to conflict with the ‘Me Menu’).
It also represents more forks which will never find their way back upstream. Still now that I write that, I wonder if perhaps that’s not a bad thing. If things don’t improve, I can switch to another distro I suppose. Would make me very sad though :(
Oh, ditching Ubuntu for another distro won’t help, as this is a Gnome thing, and Ubuntu (and every other Gnome-based distro) get what the Gnome developers give them. Anyway, I’m sure if you hunt around you can find something similar, or individual indicators, especially for something like Bluetooth which is widely used nowadays (I’ve never used Bluetooth in my life so can’t help on that one). But yeah, if enough people contact the Gnome chappies and voice their disapproval, things might start to move along.
“ditching Ubuntu for another distro won’t help, as this is a Gnome thing” – really? are you sure about that?
I’m fairly sure that these ‘improvements’ are the result of Ubuntu-specific forks and modifications. I think some folks have ported them across to Fedora, for example, but they’re not Gnome standard (will install the f13 rc when it’s released in the next few days, and take a look).
I’m one of those people (like yourself, I imagine) who’s love for Ubuntu borders on the unhealthy and unnatural :) – it would take an awful lot to drive me away, and I can’t really imagine it happening in the forseeable future. I’m just a bit disappointed by the restriction of choice entailed by these developments, and hope it’s not a sign of things to come.
Oh, sure, certain things are Ubuntu-specific, but I don’t know if Indicator Applet is one of them. If it isn’t a part of Gnome, then someone else is still developing it outside of Canonical (I assume it isn’t written by the Ubuntu team?). Anyway, I’ve learned that if enough people complain, things get done in Ubuntu… it’s this fast pace of development that keeps me from switching distros weekly (which is what many do, since no distro is perfect).
sorry – let me be clearer: the Indicator Applet *is* Ubuntu-specific; it *isn’t* part of Gnome; and it *is* written by the Ubuntu team and maintained by Canonical. (Actually, the design spec. says it was originally conceived by Mark Shuttleworth himself).
My issue is that the design philosophy here, while not inherently bad in any way, seems to be that you will use all and only the programs and services that the distro expects/recommends. Whilst much of the appeal of Ubuntu as a distro (for ‘regular’ users) may come from such tight integration, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ‘opt-out’ of these features without losing core functionality. For a gnu/linux distro, imo, this is not a strong look.
I do not blog, microblog/tweet, I don’t use flickr and I will never have a FaceBook account. However, I must have switched literally several dozen people to Ubuntu from Windows/Mac, and these kind of integrated features usually go down well. “Social from the Start” is fine, and will undoubtedly attract more converts to free software, but with each successive release it feels more and more like “social whether you like it or not”.
The two things that will undoubtedly keep me with Ubuntu for the forseeable future are the easy access to Gnome *and* KDE repositories, and the 6-month (/2 year LTS) development cycle.
(btw – I’m now using pidgin, and downgraded from iBus to SCIM since removing the Indicator Applet broke the iBus notification-area icon.)
If i wanted to add this back after running this command what would i need to type.
I misunderstood it’s function, i was actually looking to keep the indicator icon, but remove just the email option from within it and keep the chat and networks options…
OOOOPS! Yes, it always pays to check first exactly what you’re doing, hehe. Sorry, you’ll have to hunt for the answer, as I have no idea (because I only wanted to get rid of it). I would say a complete removal of the Indicator Applet then a reinstall should fix it?
well i tried to uninstall it, and it went ummm well bad. I ended up on a black screen with a blinking cursor… wasn’t to sure what that was about… but since i had just backed up everyone on my asus to an external hd, last weekend and done a fresh install 2 days ago, i just reinstalled the whole os. So it’s fixed!
anyway thanks for the quick reply, i appreciate it.
I wanted to do the same thing. Just reinstall indicator-messages and uninstall evolution-indicator, ie.
sudo apt-get install indicator-messages
sudo apt-get remove evolution-indicator
killall gnome-panel
Note that support for thunderbird and gmail (and probably more) exists for the indicator applet:
* gmail: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/05/gmail-notifier-puts-gmail-in-your.html
* thunderbird: http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2010/02/09/indicator-applet-libnotify-support-for-thunderbird/
Benoit, That did exactly what i was hoping for! Thanks for the help!
Thanks so much!
I have been looking for this forever!
Works perfectly!
Kevin
Thanks, It works perfect.
Is this all not something that Gnome should put in the preferences menu structure. Customize the lookout.
THANK YOU! This has been driving me crazy since I upgraded!
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OK, so how do I put it back? I booted into my system a week or two ago, and evolution was gone. I managed to reinstall it (and didn’t lose my addresses or mail yayy!), but the indicator didn’t return.
The indicator panel is there, but only has the broadcast and pidgin entries. Also, the indicator doesn’t update like it used to. When I mouse over to change the volume, it stays static.
I have modified these two commands from what you have in this post:
sudo apt-get evolution-indicator
sudo apt-get indicator-messages
Are these right? I’m quite new to linux commands and not sure how to create a command.
OK, not sure about Evolution, since I got rid of it in favour of Thunderbird, but if the issue is that you need to reinstall stuff, then the syntax for your commands are almost correct. Basically, “sudo” means you’re doing this as superuser, and any command that requires that has to start off with it. “apt-get” is the command for apt to download packages – the missing vital bit here is that “install” should follow it (otherwise, it just downloads it). As long as your package names are correct, all should be fine. Also note that you can do both packages at once, with:
sudo apt-get install evolution-indicator indicator-messages
Check out my Newbies section, as there are a few posts on command basics, with examples that will help you get familiar with the whole thing.
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Thanks!! its nice to get rid of these useless (to me) icons cluttering things up.
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