If you’re like most people, you use removable drives on a regular basis. But if you use Ubuntu, there’s a good chance that the icons for your removable drives are showing up on your desktop. There are a few ways to hide these icons from your desktop. The easiest way is to install the Ubuntu Unity Tweak Tool. This tool lets you customize the look and feel of Ubuntu, and it includes a hidden menu item called “Removable Drives.” To use this menu item, first open it by clicking the icon in the top left corner of the screen. Then click “Removable Drives” in the submenu that appears. You’ll see a list of all your removable drives. You can either drag and drop an icon onto the desktop or click it to open its folder. Once you’ve done this, you can hide its icon from your desktop by clicking “Hide Icon.” ..
Having recently transitioned to using Ubuntu full-time at home (instead of just part-time), this was one of the first things I wanted to disable. Sadly there’s no option in the default configuration screens, so we’ll have to use the “registry editor” for Ubuntu, called gconf-editor.
Just type in gconf-editor into the Alt+F2 run dialog to open the app.
Now browse down to the following key:
You should see a key in the right-hand pane called volumes_visible. Remove the checkbox from it, and the icons will instantly disappear from the desktop. Remember that you can always access the drives from the “Computer” icon, or easily in the file browser.
I’m much happier now with my beautiful desktop.
