// Ubuntu: remove the envelope icon (messages indicator) from the indicator applet

If you want to get rid of the envelope/message indicator on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic or 10.04 Lucid, you can't do this by removing the applet from the panel – at least not without loosing tray icons and sound control. This is because the icon is embedded within the indicator applet1) which fulfills more than a single function, including the graphical volume control.

To remove only the envelope, open a terminal and uninstall the indicator-messages package:2)

sudo apt-get remove indicator-messages

After logging out and in, the envelope is gone:
Screenshot - before and after the removal of the indicator-messages package

As you can see, the envelope icon is provided by the indicator-messages package. It should display information from various applications. But I currently don't use any program which works with it so it is useless for me right now. IMHO separate applets or a way for the user to configure the indicator applet would be preferable to the need for removing packages with superuser privileges. Hope this changes in the future.

1)
“Benachrichtigungsanzeige” in German
I'm no native speaker (English)
Please let me know if you find any errors (I want to improve my English skills). Thank you!
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