How do I remove the home directory and Trash icons from the desktop in Ubuntu 19.04?

Question

To reiterate the question: how do I remove the home directory and Trash icons from the desktop in Ubuntu 19.04?

There are several similar questions on Ask Ubuntu, but none provided the answer:

how to remove my computer icon, home folder, and trash bin from desktop was apparently asked in the era of Ubuntu 11.10 and requires removal of a My Computer icon that doesn't exist in Ubuntu 19.04.
Removing desktop icons applies to Ubuntu 14.04 and requires removal of a Computer icon that doesn't exist in Ubuntu 19.04.
How to remove trash icon from GNOME desktop? applies to Ubuntu 17.10 and requires removal of the Trash icon only.
Disabling desktop icons in Ubuntu 18.04 applies to Ubuntu 18.04.
How to Remove All Desktop Icons applies to Ubuntu 19.04, but also requires disabling the ability to create desktop icons (i.e., the Desktop folder's default behavior).

The second, third, and fourth questions are the top three hits in Google for the search terms "Ubuntu remove icons from desktop", but I can't provide the correct answer for Ubuntu 19.04 on any of them because they specifically cite a different Ubuntu version number.

@heynnema Sorry, I didn't know that I needed to accept the answer of a question that I self-answered and I'm not willing to accept an answer that requires installing a browser extension or package when simple command-line commands can be used in a default installation of Ubuntu. — Patrick Dark, Jul 20 '19 at 00:48
If you notice in your terminal commands... org.gnome.shell.extensions.desktop-icons... the extension is probably already there... and the GUI approach is much easier than using the terminal :-) — heynnema, Jul 20 '19 at 00:50

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 17 '19 at 22:52

5

The simplest method is to execute these two commands in a terminal:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.desktop-icons show-home false
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.desktop-icons show-trash false

answered Jul 17 '19 at 22:52

Patrick Dark

331

This did exactly what I wanted. Thanks a ton. +1 – Austin Dean Jan 09 '21 at 05:21

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 18 '19 at 14:28

1

Go to https://extensions.gnome.org/local/
Locate the Desktop Icons extension
Click on the settings icon
Disable these settings...

answered Jul 18 '19 at 14:28

heynnema

70,711

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 18 '22 at 08:57

Remove trash icon:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.ding show-trash false

Remove home icon:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.ding show-home false

To additionally hide the external drives:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.ding show-volumes false

How do I remove the home directory and Trash icons from the desktop in Ubuntu 19.04?

3 Answers3

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