Red Hat DESKTOP - Removing Menu Items for Individual Users

10 Chapter 3. Menu Editing and Configuration
Directory Entry (*.directory) Files
The *.directory files provide data about a menu such as its name, tooltip, and icon, and
are located in /usr/share/desktop-directories/. Refer to the GNOME Desktop System
Administration Guide for more information on directory entry files.
Desktop Entry (*.desktop) Files
The *.desktop files provide data about a menu item such as its name, command to run,
and its icon. The desktop entry files also contain keywords that determine the location
of the menu item in the menu hierarchy. The system desktop entry files are located in
/usr/share/applications/. Refer to the GNOME Desktop System Administration Guide
for more information on desktop entry files.
User-specific desktop entry files are located in $HOME/.local/share/applications/ and
can be used to add applications to the "Open With =>" submenu that appears when right-
clicking on a file. The $HOME/.local/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache contains
MIME type information associating the $HOME/.local/share/applications/*.desktop
applications with the file types specified in the *.desktop files.
3.2. Removing Menu Items for Individual Users
The menu configuration files for a given user are located in the $HOME/.config/menus/ directory.
The *.menu files are XML configuration files that allow you to override the system menu defaults.
For example, to remove the Calculator menu item from the Accessories submenu, edit the
applications.menu file in the $HOME/.config/menus/ directory, adding a new <Menu>
section using the <Exclude> element as shown:
<!DOCTYPE Menu PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN"
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu-spec/1.0/menu.dtd">
<!-- File created by desktop-file-utils version 0.8 -->
<Menu>
<Name>Applications</Name>
<MergeFile>/etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu</MergeFile>
<!-- Removes the Calculator from the Accessories submenu -->
<Menu>
<Name>Accessories</Name>
<Exclude>
<Filename>gnome-gcalctool.desktop</Filename>
</Exclude>
</Menu>
<!-- END of Calculator removal content -->
</Menu>
The *.desktop file that corresponds to a given menu item can be found in the
/usr/share/applications/ directory. The gnome-gcalctool.desktop file corresponds to
the Calculator menu item. Note that the name of the submenu (Accessories, in this case) can be
determined from the files located in the /usr/share/desktop-directories/ directory.
Similar methods can be used to remove other items from the Applications menu and its submenus.