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How can I disable the mouse over tooltips on Ubuntu 18.04? When I pass my mouse on any icon the lunch dock or perhaps anywhere else, tooltips appear.

I would like to disable this feature/behavior.

pomsky
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gastori
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2 Answers2

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The option to disable tooltips is not exposed in the user interface. You need to edit a config file.

To disable tooltips, edit the setting.ini file of your theme. System wide themes are installed in /usr/share/themes. Themes can also be installed on a per-user basis in a hidden .themes folder in the home folder of the user.

The default theme of Ubuntu 18.04 is Ambiance. In the "Ambiance" folder in the above mentionned themes folder, you will find two gtk3 folders, gtk-3.0 and gtk-3.20. In each of these folders, you will find a settings.ini folder. Edit or add a line that reads:

gtk-enable-tooltips = false

to disable tooltips in GTK3 applications, including Gnome Shell, aka the Ubuntu Desktop.

To disable tooltips in GTK2 applications, edit the file .gtkrc-2.0 file and edit or add a similar line:

gtk-enable-tooltips = 0
vanadium
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  • vanadium .. I followed your instruction however i still have the tooltips ... – gastori Nov 21 '18 at 18:48
  • by applying the above configurations I was able to disable the tooltips on the apps ... i was looking for ho to disable the tooltip on the app icons i have as favorites in my ubuntu side dock bar ... you know the unity old task bar kind of thing. – gastori Nov 22 '18 at 11:29
  • Thanks for the feedback. Please however clarify the title and content of your question to indicate that you are specifically concerned on these specific icons because currently it appears as if you are concerned about disabling tooltips in general – vanadium Nov 22 '18 at 12:20
  • Sure .. basically I use the Dock side bar and I have several apps pinned as my favorites. When I pass my mouse over I see the name of the application as tooltip .. It is not really a big of issue, but I would like to disable it ... and I cannot find any reference .. – gastori Nov 23 '18 at 11:17
  • Please ask a new question that precisely reflects what you wish. My current answer is valid for the question as you now posted. It is not allowed to change the meaning of a question after it has been posted/answered; only clarification is allowed. – vanadium Nov 23 '18 at 11:21
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For Ubuntu 18.04 with GNOME Flashback

In case your problem is still not sufficiently solved, here is something that worked for me under Ubuntu 18.04 but I also GNOME Flashback. Install the dconf editor. Type:

sudo apt-get install dconf-editor

Then, open the editor and search for "tooltips". In my case, it was sufficient to set the buttons for "show-tooltips" as well as for "/org/gnome-panel/general/enable-tooltips" to "off".

Edit: In case you can not find some of options, you may try playing around with other seemingly relevant options.

Community
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    What's your Ubuntu version and desktop environment? I couldn't find the path `/org/gnome-panel/general/enable-tooltips` in dconf Editor. Perhaps you made some important changes before trying this solution? – pomsky Apr 25 '19 at 22:15
  • @pomsky, sorry. I edited my answer. Can you still find the "show-tooltips" option alone and didn't it work for you? –  Apr 27 '19 at 00:33
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    Yeah, you didn't mentioned the "GNOME Flashback" part before. It seems the `gnome-panel` package needs to be installed. It is not installed by default in a usual Ubuntu 18.04 installation, so this won't work in that case. – pomsky Apr 27 '19 at 00:48
  • @pomsky, did you install gnome flashback and did it work afterwards? –  Apr 27 '19 at 01:24
  • I'm currently have no plan to switch my desktop environment. – pomsky Apr 27 '19 at 01:38