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I would like to remove several of the Indicators that usually appear in the upper-right-hand side of the login screen. In particular, I would like to remove the accessibility, keyboard layout, power, and sound indicators, although it would be nice to know how to generically add or remove indicators. How can I do this?

fouric
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  • You are using Unity-greeter? There should be a config file in /etc/lightdm/, but I don't remember which one and can't check as I am sitting on a Windows machine at the moment. Read all files - At least one should contain a section about the indicators you mentioned. Copy the file as backup and find out how to edit it. Or post its content (as edit to your question!) and I will have a look. You have to leave me a comment (@ByteCommander) then... – Byte Commander Apr 02 '15 at 22:43
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    What's the system you're using ? 14.04 ? – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy May 11 '15 at 06:47
  • @Serg, yes, I'm using 14.04. – fouric May 12 '15 at 04:15
  • @ByteCommander, there are four greeter configuration files in my /etc/lightdm: lightdm.conf, lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf, lightdm-gtk-greeter-ubuntu.conf, and lightdm-webkit-greeter.conf. I have no idea what the difference between any of them is, but I did try to disable the login screen clock through each of them, and it didn't work. – fouric May 13 '15 at 02:41
  • I am on 15.04 now and am afraid that I seem to have none of these config files any more... Could you upload your four config files (to http://pastebin.com/ for example) and share the link? I could look over them and see if they look about as I remember mine. – Byte Commander May 13 '15 at 20:08
  • @ByteCommander, here are (most of the) files: http://pastebin.com/zZ6KjPNR – fouric May 13 '15 at 22:18
  • In file lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf the line show-indicators=~host;~spacer;~a11y;~session;~language;~a11y;~clock;~power; should be responsible for which indicators are displayed. You could try and remove items from that list and see which indicators will disappear. I mean "clock" is clear, but no idea what e.g. "a11y" stands for... Doing a bit more researching. – Byte Commander May 14 '15 at 10:33

2 Answers2

8

One way that I have tried in Ubuntu 14.04 using LightDM (Default); Using Some config files stored in /usr/share/unity/indicators/

Let's say you want to hide keyboard indicator:

  1. Open corresponding file for editing

    sudo nano /usr/share/unity/indicators/com.canonical.indicator.keyboard

  2. Comment object paths for the mode you want to hide in, example this will hide it in the greeting screen and lock screen

    [Indicator Service]
Name=indicator-keyboard
ObjectPath=/com/canonical/indicator/keyboard
Position=80

[desktop]
ObjectPath=/com/canonical/indicator/keyboard/desktop

#[desktop_greeter]
#ObjectPath=/com/canonical/indicator/keyboard/desktop_greeter

#[desktop_lockscreen]
#ObjectPath=/com/canonical/indicator/keyboard/desktop_lockscreen

[ubiquity]
ObjectPath=/com/canonical/indicator/keyboard/desktop

  3. Reboot or just restart display manager

    sudo service lightdm restart
user.dz
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    Aaa! This is the first thing that I've tried that works! However, I don't see either the wireless or the accessibility indicators present, both of which I want to hide. Would you happen to know where these are? – fouric May 13 '15 at 02:37
  • I confirm that, network indicator which is created by nm-applet and I'm not sure about accessibility indicator. – user.dz May 15 '15 at 16:52
6

Coming with different approach:

$ pstree
init─┬─...
     ├─lightdm─┬─Xorg
     │         ├─lightdm─┬─lightdm-greeter───unity-greeter───4*[{unity-greeter}]
     ...

$ dpkg -L unity-greeter
...
/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.canonical.unity-greeter.gschema.xml
...

$ more /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.canonical.unity-greeter.gschema.xml

...
    <key name="indicators" type="as">
      <default>['ug-accessibility', 'com.canonical.indicator.keyboard', 'com.canonical.indicator.session', 'com.canonical.indicator.datetime', 'com.canonical.indicator.
power', 'com.canonical.indicator.sound', 'application']</default>
      <summary>Which indicators to load</summary>
    </key>
...

unity-greeter is run by lightdm user! Instead of looking around for a way to change the dconf setting for that ghost user. I override the default. Tested in Ubuntu 14.04 64bit (VirtualBox).

  1. Create new dconf override file

    sudo nano /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/90_unity-greeter.gschema.override

    Put these two lines in it with indicator you want to keep:

    [com.canonical.unity-greeter]
indicators=['com.canonical.indicator.session']

    Default is:

    ['ug-accessibility', 'com.canonical.indicator.keyboard', 'com.canonical.indicator.session', 'com.canonical.indicator.datetime', 'com.canonical.indicator.power', 'com.canonical.indicator.sound', 'application']

  2. Recompile glib schemas

    sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

  3. Restart the display manager

    sudo service lightdm restart
user.dz
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    This one allows me to remove the accessibility (ug-accessibility) and wireless (application) indicators. Between this answer and your previous one, it is now possible to remove every one of the preinstalled indicators. – fouric May 15 '15 at 21:13
  • @InkBlend, Actually this covers all indicators with single setting point. No need for my other partial solution – user.dz May 16 '15 at 07:54