Hide applications in Gnome 3 dock

[Japplo]

Hello Fedorausers!

I have added a quick vlc starter to my gnome dock:

cat /usr/bin/vlc-starter
#!/bin/sh
vlc /Channels/dvb-c-free-tv-channels-190211.conf $*

cat /usr/share/applications/vlc-starter.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=VLC media player TV digital
Comment=Read, capture, broadcast your multimedia streams
Exec=vlc-starter
Icon=/Icons/vlc-tv-digital.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=AudioVideo;Player;
X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.18

If I use the starter, I have two vlc Icons in my dock, like in the attachment gnome3-2.png.
How can I prevent this? I need only the starter Icon in the dock like in the attachment
gnome3-1.png.

Many thanks,
Japplo

[Gareth Jones]

The problem here is that the dash is used for switching between running programs, as well as starting new programs. (Running applications are indicated by the white "shadow" under the icons.)

When you start your script, it runs VLC. The shell recognizes the VLC window as VLC rather than your script, so it adds the vanilla VLC icon to the dash for switching to it.

I'm afraid I've no idea how to make the shell recognize your script's VLC as special though.

Gareth

---------- Post added at 03:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:25 PM ----------

Also, if all your script does is start VLC, you could change the last line to "exec vlc /Channels/...", which will cause the script to replace itself with VLC rather than hanging around in the background until VLC exits.

It's possible (but unlikely I suppose) that gnome-shell tracks launched processes, in which case this might also fix your problem.

Gareth

---------- Post added at 03:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:29 PM ----------

P.S.: Also, use '"$@"' rather than '$*' on the VLC line, so that arguments containing spaces are handled properly. $* will cause them to be split into separate arguments at the spaces, whereas "$@" keeps them as originally specified.

[Japplo]

Hi Gareth,
thank you for reply. I will look for an extension, but currently I could not find a "starter" extension which is independent from the dock

Japplo

[Japplo]

Has anybody an idea how to fix that without replacing the gnome 3 dock?