Hide-icon.sh - A Small Script to Hide Annoying Application Icons

Question

If you are super-OCD like me, and you can't stand those ugly icons for applications that are forced to be on your system due to dependencies, I've written a little script to create .desktop files with "NoDisplay=true" in your ~/.local/share/applications directory based on a list you supply it.
To use it, just run
./hide-icon.sh list_of_desktop_file_names.txt
The script will also remove any .desktop files for applications that are no longer installed (that are in the list file).
Script:
#!/bin/sh
APPLICATION_PATH="/usr/share/applications"
USER_APPLICATION_PATH="${HOME}/.local/share/applications"
for FILE in `cat $1`; do
if [ -e "${APPLICATION_PATH}/${FILE}" ]; then
echo "Creating file ${USER_APPLICATION_PATH}/${FILE}"
echo "NoDisplay=true" > "${USER_APPLICATION_PATH}/${FILE}"
elif [ ! -e "${APPLICATION_PATH}/${FILE}" ] && [ -e "${USER_APPLICATION_PATH}/${FILE}" ]; then
echo "Deleting unnecessary file ${USER_APPLICATION_PATH}/${FILE}"
rm "${USER_APPLICATION_PATH}/${FILE}"
fi
done
My personal list file:
assistant-qt4.desktop
avahi-discover.desktop
bssh.desktop
bvnc.desktop
CMake.desktop
designer-qt4.desktop
ipython-qtconsole.desktop
jconsole.desktop
linguist-qt4.desktop
policytool.desktop
qdbusviewer-qt4.desktop
qtconfig-qt4.desktop
qv4l2.desktop
gda-control-center-5.0.desktop
gda-browser-5.0.desktop
nvidia-settings.desktop
hplip.desktop
ipython.desktop
zenmap.desktop
zenmap-root.desktop
Hope this helps someone make their application list less cluttered.

Answer 1

To hide the window completely use…
click here to open this script in your editor<pre style="font-family: 'Monaco', 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; overflow:auto; color: #222; background: #DDD; padding: 0.2em; font-size: 10px; width:400px">tell application "System Events"
tell process "Speech Feedback Server"
set value of attribute "AXHidden" to true
end tell
end tell</pre>…or to just minimize it to the dock use…
click here to open this script in your editor<pre style="font-family: 'Monaco', 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; overflow:auto; color: #222; background: #DDD; padding: 0.2em; font-size: 10px; width:400px">tell application "System Events"
tell process "Speech Feedback Server"
tell window "Speech Feedback"
set value of attribute "AXMinimized" to 1
end tell
end tell
end tell
</pre>