Remove Shortcuts from the Application Menu in Linux

Introduction

In the Linux application menu, it is not easy to manage the application shortcuts. Sometimes, there could be ghost icons left over from deleting the applications incorrectly.

In this blog post, I would like to show where to find the application shortcuts and how to delete them.

Linux Menu Shortcuts

The shortcuts in the Linux GUI menu are the *.desktop files in the following directories.

/usr/share/applications
~/.local/share/applications

Sometimes, there could be *.desktop files nested in the directories mentioned above. For example, the wine programs are nested in the wine directory.

~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/

If there is ever invalid or unwanted shortcuts, we could just delete the corresponding *.desktop files, and reboot the computer.