Ubuntu – Hide text on system load indicator

The Application Indicator Service has an internal API that will allow grabbing a list of all the indicators, which includes their DBus addresses. You can do that using this command line:

gdbus call --session --dest com.canonical.indicator.application --object-path /com/canonical/indicator/application/service --method com.canonical.indicator.application.service.GetApplications

You'll get back something not super useful, as it's in a psuedo-JSON format. If you write a script you can pull it into a parser and work with it. If you're curious about doing it just once, just read through the text. You're looking for a field that is like this: :1.XXX That is the DBus address for the indicator.

Once you have the address for the indicator you can ask DBus what the PID is for that indicator. You request the PID of :1.123 like this:

gdbus call --session --dest org.freedesktop.DBus --object-path / --method org.freedesktop.DBus.GetConnectionUnixProcessID :1.123

After you now have the PID you can ask /proc for information on the process. For example if you wanted to know the command use to launch process number 1 you could do:

cat /proc/1/cmndline

Good luck!

What I have used in the past is the following from this link: How to easily hide the username in the Unity panel

Steps:

1. Install dconf-editor: apt-get install dconf-tools

2. Open it and navigate to apps-->indicator-session and on the right-side, uncheck show-real-name-on-panel

3. Reboot

Additionally, you can open a terminal and type the following:

gesettings set com.canonical.indicator.session user show-menu false

Or download and install Ubuntu Tweak from here: http://ubuntu-tweak.com/ and follow these steps to turn off Fast User Switching which will hide the list of other users:

1. Click on Tweaks
2. Click on Miscellaneous
3. Check the box next to Disable "Fast User Switching"