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Editing XFCE Applications Menu

 Menu After Editing
Menu Before Editing

Since Gnome 3 has been messed up, many Linux folks finally switched into another Desktop Environments. One of the favorite destination is XFCE Desktop. It is very typical to the old Gnome 2 Desktop and still actively maintained by its developers, so people feel safe to use this Desktop.

Unfortunately, IMHO, XFCE folks didn't write enough manual about XFCE Tweaking. One of the missing part about XFCE manual is in Editing XFCE Applications Menu.

Why is editing XFCE Menu necessary? For me, as an ex-Gnome 2 user, it is necessary. IMHO, XFCE Menu arrangement is too bloated. There are many shortcut at the menu and too many separators and that is annoying my sight every accessing the menu. And I want to remove all the shortcuts and the separators at the menu, so how do I do this? Let's dive.

XDG
XFCE, just like another DEs in Linux, follow the FreeDesktop standard. The file configuration about the menu is put in /etc/xdg/menus and named as xfce-applications.menu. So, the file configuration for the XFCE Applications Menu is located in /etx/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu. All we need to do is to edit this file.

Editing Menu
As I told above, to edit XFCE Applications menu is by editing file /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu. To do this, just simply use our favorite, available text editor (for now, some XFCE based distro has switched from mousepad to leafpad for the sake of speed).

First, backup the original file. As root, backup the file :
sudo mv /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.old
Second, edit the file :
sudo leafpad (or mousepad or gedit or whatever) /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu.

Find the line : Layout
started from this line Layout block all lines to the line /Layout and delete those lines. Last, Save. Now access the menu and see the change. Our XFCE Applications menu now becomes simpler.

Xubuntu Tweaking
Not like Fedore XFCE and or another XFCE based distro, Xubuntu doesn't put the file configuration in /etc/xdg/menus but put the file in the /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.menu instead.

So, to edit Xubuntu Applications menu, the way is just same, but the file is different.

sudo mv /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.menu /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.old
sudo edit /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.menu
Note
If we want to let one or some shortcut left, such as Ubuntu Software Center, don't delete all the lines from to
but leave the lines we want :

Layout
Filename ubuntu-software-center.desktop /Filename
/Layout
Reverting Back The Menu
If we want to revert the XFCE menu to its default, just delete the edited one and rename the backup.

sudo rm /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu
sudo mv /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.old /etx/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu
In Xubuntu :
sudo rm /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.menu
sudo /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.old /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.menu

Menu Editor
As I know until I was writing this post, there is no an existed menu editor that compatible with XFCE Menu. I've heard about LXMenuEditor but seems for long ago has been abandoned by the developer.
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