How to Remove Home Folder from Desktop / Trash from Left Dock in Ubuntu

This is a beginner’s guide shows how to disable the “Home” folder on the desktop and/or “Trash” icon from left panel in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Different to previous Ubuntu releases, the new Ubuntu LTS now uses the Desktop Icons NG (DING) extension to handle the Desktop icons. It’s a fork from the previous official Desktop Icons project, with several enhancements like Drag’n’Drop.

With the new extension, there are now more options to change the desktop icon appearance.

What can be configured:

With following steps you can do changes for:

  • Change the size of desktop icons.
  • Show or hide Home icon, Trash icon, Mounted drive icons
  • New icons alignment
  • Settings shared with Nautilus.

To Get Started:

1.) Firstly, go to top-right corner system menu and click “Settings” to open Gnome Control Center.

Open Settings

2.) When the settings utility opens, go to “Appearance” in the left. Then, scroll down in right and turn off the slider option for “Show Personal folder” to hide it from the desktop.

NOTE for Ubuntu 22.10, the settings are now available in "Ubuntu Desktop" tab.

3.) By clicking on “Configure dock behavior”, you may also remove the “Trash” as well as mounted volume icons from left panel.

Disable Trash & Mounted icons in left panel

Remove Home folder, Trash icon via command

For those familiar with Linux commands, press Ctrl + Alt + T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command:

  • Hide ‘Home’ folder form the desktop by running command:
    gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.ding show-home false
  • Remove “Trash” icon from left dock/panel:
    gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock show-trash false
  • And, to get rid of mounted volumes from panel, use command:
    gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock show-mounts false
Hi, I'm Merilyn Ne, a computer geek working on Ubuntu Linux for many years and would like to write useful tips for beginners. Forgive me for language mistakes. I'm not a native speaker of English.