How to delete a persistent menu item

[berniewalp]

I'd be grateful for advice about removing a persistent menu item. I have a "Firefox" entry left over from a botched manual installation. (I have removed everything I can find relating to Firefox but still an entry exists. I've tried "apt remove", "flatpak uninstall", reboot, etc.)

Hoping someone can point me to an answer. Perhaps an ASCII file that governs the menu's contents? Thanks.

[Larry78723]

Try the following command:

Code: Select all

sudo apt purge firefox

[revmacian]

I'm wondering if this is included in the recent files function - this function doesn't update when files are deleted so it will give a location despite the file no longer existing.

[AndyMH]

Hoping someone can point me to an answer. Perhaps an ASCII file that governs the menu's contents? Thanks.

The menu is built by parsing the contents of /usr/share/applications. In there you will find a lot of .desktop files. These follow a standard format, e.g.

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[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=HP15C
Exec=hp15c
Comment=
Terminal=false
Icon=hp15c.png
Type=Application
Name[en_GB]=HP15C
GenericName=HP15C
StartupNotify=false
Categories=Utility

If purging doesn't work have a look in there and see if you can find the errant firefox desktop file and delete it.

[spamegg]

Right-click on the Menu button,
Click "Configure".
Then go to the "Menu" tab.
Click "Open the menu editor".
Here, look through the categories to find your "firefox" menu entry, and uncheck the box next to it!

[berniewalp]

Thanks everybody for the rapid suggestions. Unfortunately no luck. The menu editor shows Firefox nowhere; neither does it appear in any name of any file in /usr/share/applications. (Neither does the character string appear in any text of any file in that directory). It did not appear in the list of recent documents.

I may moot the question as I'm considering replacing the drive with a larger one, in which case I'll install the operating system anew.

[HaveaMint]

Maybe save your firefox bookmarks, once saved rename /home/username/.mozilla to .mozilla.org Start FF and let it start a new folder with defaults. If everything is good add the saved bookmark folder. Once you are sure all is good add one at a time any addons you had.

[berniewalp]

Thanks but I don't have any troubles starting firefox from the command-line if I install it from Mozilla's *.tar.bz2 file. It's in a different spot than the mystery entry in the menu. It's the mystery menu entry I'm trying to get rid of.

I discovered a directory $HOME/.local/share/applications that has some *.desktop files (my Arduino IDE and a wine subdirectory). No firefox there either.

[SilentBlue]

Try the following:
Right-click on 'Menu' -> 'Configure...' -> 'Menu'
Then uncheck 'Show recent'

If it works, it means the entry probably comes from an item in the 'Recent files' list. To remove the entry definitively (and be able to re-enable 'Show recent' without the problem), open the file manager (Nemo), select 'Recent' in the left panel, and search and remove the item corresponding to your entry.

It worked for me for some menu entries.

For "folder" entries in the menu pointing to a non-existing folder (for example a theoretical path '/media/xxx/foldername') the item is not displayed in the 'Recent' area of Nemo but can still be found in the file ~ /.local/share/recently-used.xbel. Maybe in this case one can edit that *.xbel file directly to remove unwanted items that appear in the Menu but which would not display in 'Recent'?