How To Remove Mounted Drives From The Ubuntu Unity Launcher

All the mounted drives (this includes USB drives, NTFS and other partitions that you set to automount, etc. - basically everything that's in /media) show up in the Ubuntu 11.04 Unity launcher by default which is usually ok if you have a big monitor or if you don't have a lot of applications pinned to the Launcher. But if you use a netbook or just want more space on your Unity launcher, here's how to change the launcher behavior so that it doesn't display any mounted drives.


But firstly, here is how to unmount external devices.

How to unmount external devices

How will you unmount / safely remove mounted external media if you do this? You have at least 2 easy options:

A. Open Nautilus, right click on the mounted device and select "Eject" or "Safely remove drive".

B. Using "ejecter", an AppIndicator available in the official Ubuntu 11.04 repositories which you can install by clicking the button below:

If the above button doesn't work for your browser, open a terminal and copy/paste the following command to install Ejecter:

sudo apt-get install ejecter

Once installed, press ALT + F2 and enter "ejecter" to run it. To run it when your computer starts, open "Startup Applications", add a new startup item and add "ejecter" for both the name and command.

There is another appindicator called "indicator-usb" but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work anymore (when running it on my Natty installation, nothing happens).

By the way, for a huge list of AppIndicators, check out this AskUbuntu question.

Now that you know how to unmount external media easily, let's remove the mounted media icons from the Unity launcher.

How to remove mounted drives from the Ubuntu Unity launcher

1. Install dconf-tools by clicking the button below:

Or install it using a terminal:

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

2. Press ALT + F2 and enter: "dconf-editor", then navigate to desktop > unity > devices and change the "devices-option" value from "OnlyMounted" to "Never".

That's all - the mounted usb drives (or any other mounted volumes) should now stop showing up on the Unity launcher.

Extra tip: also remove mounted drives from your desktop

If you decide to keep the default Ubuntu 11.04 Unity launcher behavior and display the mounted media icons on the launcher, there's really no reason to have the mounted volumes show up on the desktop too. Really now, why both on the launcher and desktop?

You probably already know how to do this, since this is an option in Ubuntu Tweak but if you don't want to install Ubuntu Tweak just for this, to remove mounted volumes from your dekstop, press ALT + F2 and enter: "gconf-editor", then navigate to apps > nautilus > desktop and disable (uncheck the box) "volumes_visible".

Indicator Applet To Mount CD / DVD Images: Mounty

Mounty is a very simple indicator applet you can use to mount CD / DVD images. It supports ISO, IMG, BIN, MDF and NRG and besides mounting, it can also burn the images to a CD/DVD.

Mounty can also remember the mounted images and add it to startup with a single click. It's a very simple but effective little indicator applet.

Install Mounty in Ubuntu

Mounty is available in the TahuTEK PPA. Add it and install Mounty in Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 or 11.04 using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tldm217/tahutek.net
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mounty

Once installed, you'll find it under Applications > Accessories > Disk Image Mounter (Mounty).

Thanks to Damar for the PPA; AppIndicator created by Kasimir @ skss.learnfree.eu for creating this applet.

Ubuntu Script To Automatically Mount NTFS Drives On Startup

In the "Ubuntu 10.04 First Time Use Script 0.2 Released: It Now Comes With A GUI" post, it has been suggested in the comments to add an option to automatically mount NTFS drives on startup. The problem was that I didn't know how to do this using the command line, but I finally figured how to do it so I decided to release this as a separate script first. I will of course also add it to the "Ubuntu First Time Use Script" (a new version is coming very soon!).

A few explanations on what the script does:

The Automatically Mount NTFS Drives script installs ntfs-3g, then looks up all the NTFS drives on your computer. Once it finds all of them, it creates a folder in /media for each of the NTFS drives, like: sda1, sda5, and so on. The script then writes a line in your /etc/fstab file for each of your NTFS drives so that each NTFS drive is mounted in it's corresponding folder. If you already have some lines containing "ntfs-3g" in your /etc/fstab file, the script skips all of this (in case someone runs it twice).

Warning: use this script at your own risk.

Instructions to use this script have been temporarily removed. I've only tested it in Karmic but some users are using it in other Ubuntu versions and experience some issues with it so until the script will be updated, the script has been removed.

Note: for now I've only tested it on Ubuntu Karmic, but I'll also test it on Lucid in a few hours. But it should work just fine anyway.

Deactivate Password Request For Mounting Partitions In Ubuntu Karmic

Here is yet another tip sent to us by reader Mahdi (thanks once again!). This time: how to deactivate password request for mounting partitions in Ubuntu Karmic. Here's what you need to do:

1. Open a terminal and paste this:

sudo gedit /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.devicekit.disks.policy

2. In the file you opened with Gedit above, search for this:

<action id="org.freedesktop.devicekit.disks.filesystem-mount-system-internal">

And scrolling down a bit, you will see something like this (for me, it's on line 34 in that file so it should be on the same line for you too, but double check that):

<allow_active>auth_admin_keep</allow_active>

which needs to be changed to:

<allow_active>yes</allow_active>

That's it.

Furius ISO Mount: Application For Mounting Files In Ubuntu Linux

Furius ISO Mount is a user friendly Gtk+ Interface to Mount ISO, IMG, BIN, MDF and NRG Image files without burning to disk.

Features:

• Automatically Mounts ISO, IMG, BIN, MDF and NRG Image Files.
• Automatically creates a mount point in your home directory.
• Automatically Unmounts the Image files.
• Automatically removes the mount directory to return your home directory to its previous state.
• Automatically saves the history of the last 10 images mounted.
• Mounts multiple images.
• Burn ISO and IMG Files to optical disk.
• Generate Md5 and SHA1 checksums.
• Automatically retrieves any previously unmounted images.
• Automatically generates a log file of all commands needed to mount and unmount images manually.
• Supports Drag n Drop automatic mounting of images (Python version only)
• Can be used without installation/compiling (Python version only)
• Localizable (Mono version only. Currently Czech, Danish, French, Hungarian, Italian, German, Polish, Slovenian, Spanish and Turkish are available.

Before using Furious ISO Mount, you must run the following command in a terminal:

sudo adduser [your login username] fuse

Download Furius ISO Mount (Ubuntu .deb and source files available)