How To: Remove “Show Other Applications” menu items

Sometimes when you try to open a file on your system, your desktop environment might match it to the wrong application which leads to an error opening the file. But this is just a standard day-to-day event you probably already know way to well how to handle. So why am I bringing this up anyways?

Updated Mar 25, 2015How To'sWritten by Liron
show other applications

So why am I bringing this up anyways? you probably wonder. Well, it’s not that, but what usually comes afterwards that might complicate things up a bit. You’ll understand what I mean in a short moment.

Where is the problem?

Continuing with the situation I described above, the next, reasonable thing that comes to mind you should do, is to right-click your mouse and choose “Open with” from the pop-up menu. For the sake of the argument, let’s just say there’s no alternative suggested and you decide to click on “Other Application…” > “Show Other Applications“.

That is the moment where you see, a load of other applications you have installed on your system, most of which are completely irrelevant to what you are looking for, some of them might even be duplicates, which just makes it harder on you to find what you seek.

A good example for the mess you may encounter upon opening the “Show Other Applications” menu, is the WINE applications bundle, that is commonly being displayed in doubles on that list (see image below) even after you remove WINE from your computer.

But WINE is not to blame in this case, the truth is, this can also happen with any other application too, and sometimes you just want to clear that list a little bit so you could have easier time to find what you need, instead of dealing with all that clutter every time you open up this menu.

show other applications wine doubles

So, how can you filter that list and make it show only relevant and necessary menu items?

Filter “Show Other Applications” menu list

1. In order to do just that you’ll need to go into your home / user folder and press Ctrl+H to show hidden files, then go into .local/share/applications folder, that’s where you’ll find WINE and perhaps some other applications menu entries.

You can either opt to edit the files you see inside there commenting / removing the unnecessary lines or, simply discard the files themselves. Whatever you decide, just make sure you aren’t deleting any important line/files along the way. I recommend you make a backup before attempting any change.

2. Another place you can find menu items, is inside /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache file, this file should not be deleted, but can be edited by opening it up with root privilegs. If you do not know how to do that, then you probably shouldn’t mess with it.

That’s it.