2010-08-04 // 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:
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.