Ubuntu – How to remove ‘Places’ entries from the Nautilus sidebar

In order to achieve that.. you should edit the Nautilus source code and the nautilus.desktop file or using another file manager that allows this, such as nemo.

NOTE: In this example I'm running ubuntu 13.04 with nautilus (files) 3.6.3.
You can test this in a virtual machine to see if everything is OK.

1) Make sure you have enable the Source code repository

• Open the Ubuntu Software Center
• In the Menu Bar choose Edit -> Software Sources. Click to enable "Source code repository". Just in case I use the "Main Server" to Download.

Open a Terminal Window to update the repositories.

• sudo apt-get update

2) In the Terminal type the following to install the necessary packages.

• sudo apt-get install build-essential quilt

3) Install build dependencies.

• sudo apt-get build-dep nautilus

4) Create a folder to download the source code.

• mkdir ~/Downloads/src

• cd ~/Downloads/src

5) Download the source code & Export variables.

• apt-get source nautilus

• export QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches

• export EDITOR=gedit

6) Create the patch and edit the source code.

• cd nautilus-3.6.3/

• quilt new my_custom_places.patch

• quilt edit src/nautilus-places-sidebar.c

Custom Trash: To change the name of the Trash.You can change the strings in the lines 567 and 569.

eg: "Trash" to "Custom Trash" & "Open the trash" to "Open the Custom Trash"

Add Folder: In this example I will add the "Test" folder in my home directory /home/virtual/Test. (change the folder according to your needs)

After the line number 562 add the following:

/* add Test directory */
mount_uri = "file:///home/virtual/Test";
icon = g_themed_icon_new (NAUTILUS_ICON_FOLDER);
add_place (sidebar, PLACES_BUILT_IN,
       SECTION_COMPUTER,
       _("Test"), icon, mount_uri,
       NULL, NULL, NULL, 0,
       _("Open Test folder"));
g_object_unref (icon);

Remove Recent Files: To remove the Recent Files from the places... delete the lines from 525 to 534.

Save the changes.

7) Build the deb packages.

• quilt refresh
• fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage

8) Install the deb packages.

• cd ..

• sudo dpkg -i *deb

9) For system-wide..edit the nautilus.desktop file to add the folder eg:(/home/virtual/Test) in the quick list.

• sudo nano /usr/share/applications/nautilus.desktop

Change:

Actions=Window;

To:

Actions=Test;Window;

Add:

[Desktop Action Test]
Name=Test             
Exec=nautilus --new-window /home/virtual/Test
OnlyShowIn=Unity;

Before:

After:

10) Finally you can logout and Login to see the changes.

RESULT:

Hope this helps.

Edit the file:

$HOME/.config/gtk-3.0/bookmarks

and remove all the lines that correspond to the folders you want to remove from the sidebar. My end product looked like this:

file:///home/username/Downloads

replace 'username' with your username.