Ubuntu – Remove favorites from nautilus

^{Tested in Ubuntu 14.04}

Those bookmarks are controlled by ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs and commenting out a lines configures the appearance of the list

As an example, to remove the Videos bookmark from the list change the line:

XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

to

#XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

Note:
After login the file ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs gets reverted to the original set by /etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults. To prevent that make the file "read-only" either by right clicking and then properties > permissions or using the command

chmod -w ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

If you need to edit the file again do the opposite via Nautilus or use the command

chmod +w ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

If you want to apply this to all users in your system change the file vim /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf and set the option enabled to False. You need root permissions or this.

The extension for this menu entry is in the package deja-dup.

% apt-file search /usr/lib/nautilus/extensions-3.0/libdeja-dup.so
deja-dup: /usr/lib/nautilus/extensions-3.0/libdeja-dup.so

Therefore and as you don't use backups (really? You should read this.), a simple solution. Remove Déjà Dup from your system:

sudo apt-get remove deja-dup

and the menu entry will disappear.

Unfortunately this solution is like you having cancer and not wanting to take any chemo-therapy because it makes you feel bad. The better solution is to actually do backups, because otherwise we'll see each other again in a few years when your hard drive blows up and you've lost all your data!