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opensores

Member

Registered: 2011-09-30

Posts: 7

remove google search from gnome-shell

Is it even possible?

I went into /usr/share/gnome-shell/search_providers and deleted google.xml, presumably removing it as a search option, then made a copy of wikipedia.xml, editing the pertinent areas to search DuckDuckGo.

So now, with the meta key, I have the option of searching "Wikipedia Google DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo." Not sure why DDG's listed 3 times but the main annoyance is that Google insists on remaining on my desktop. I even tried “Googling” to find some more information, to no avail.

If anyone would be so kind as to nudge me in the right direction, I would be very grateful.

Thanks

hadrons123

Member

From: chennai

Registered: 2011-10-07

Posts: 1,249

Re: remove google search from gnome-shell

Did you see this?

See if it helps removing the google.

opensores

Member

Registered: 2011-09-30

Posts: 7

Re: remove google search from gnome-shell

Thanks for the response.

Yes, I did see that, and I've been playing with a couple of those files for a while but can't figure anything out. I don't know javascript or xml, so that might be part of my problem...

Before I started looking at search.js I ran $gsettings set org.gnome.shell disabled-open-search-providers "['google.xml']" thinking it would disable google, but it didn't do anything.

Oddly enough running the same command with 'wikipedia.xml' in place of google does remove wikipedia as a search option.

don_crissti

Member

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 35

Re: remove google search from gnome-shell

Actually getting rid of google search is only a matter of keeping the file (google.xml) and replacing its content... Suppose you want to have only wikipedia search: replace the content of /usr/share/gnome-shell/search_providers/google.xml with the content of /usr/share/gnome-shell/search_providers/wikipedia.xml, move the latter into a backup folder then restart gnome-shell and there you go, no more google search on your desktop.

opensores

Member

Registered: 2011-09-30

Posts: 7

Re: remove google search from gnome-shell

Thanks for the idea.

I am still having some weird issues though. GNOME must be caching these setting somewhere else: I put everything back to the defaults, deleted my custom duckduckgo.xml and replaced the contents of google.xml with the contents of wikipedia.xml, just as a test. Now when I hit the meta key and type a search query my options are "Wikipedia DuckDuckGo Wikipedia Wikipedia DuckDuckGo"

Hurray Google is gone! But I now I'm wondering why DDG is still there despite having been deleted, and why there are multiple entries for everything...

don_crissti

Member

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 35

Re: remove google search from gnome-shell

Works OK here but I haven't messed with gsettings prior to "remove" google search. So maybe you should check your shell search engine settings in dconf-editor:  org>gnome>shell  should have:
disabled-open-search-providers []
Can't think of anything else unless you modified other shell config files...

opensores

Member

Registered: 2011-09-30

Posts: 7

Re: remove google search from gnome-shell

Nope, I hit the "Set to Default" button in dconf-editor and it went back to empty brackets before my last post, and I haven't modified any other files.

Thanks again for checking though.