Xfce Forum

forcedtopicksomething

Member

Registered: 2023-07-26

Posts: 76

Possible to suppress one specific annoying tooltip in the Xfce GUI?

Every day, several times, a tooltip saying "Minimise all open windows and show the desktop" pops up in the lower-right corner, covering important screen real estate for me.

This happens because my mouse cursor naturally ends up in the bottom-right corner, over the "Show Desktop" button which I've added there because it's a crucial component of a desktop environment.

This is very annoying, so I'm trying to get rid of it. Nothing has worked so far. The properties for the "Show Desktop" button have no option to turn this tooltip off. I also tried various ways to turn off tooltips in general which did not work either, but I don't really want that as some others are useful/wanted.

How can I disable/suppress only this specific tooltip?

generated110

Member

Registered: 2026-01-21

Posts: 1

Re: Possible to suppress one specific annoying tooltip in the Xfce GUI?

Alot of assumptions here (version of xfce, system, comfort with command line tools, etc...) But.. here goes...

I'm not sure of the right way (if there is one) to do it.  But, if no display options available to disable tool tip, have to resort to compile own version with a mod to bypass that tooltip.  Or, if don't want to setup a dev environment. I tried these commands to create a new directory, modify a copy of the library file and overwrite it with sudo (keeping a backup of original), then issued a restart of the panel, it worked:

First remove it from the panel (right-click showdesktop and remove...), Click confirm button.

USE YOUR LIBRARY PATH IF DIFFERENT, mine is /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/plugins/libshowdesktop.so on a 64bit Debian setup

## make working directory, go into it and copy library into it
$ mkdir mod; cd mod
$ cp /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/plugins/libshowdesktop.so .

## Locate address where phrase is in the binary USE YOUR FOUND ADDRESS HERE IN THE HEXEDIT STEP
$ hexdump -C libshowdesktop.so | grep -E "Minimize|Minimise"
    00004480  4d 69 6e 69 6d 69 7a 65  20 61 6c 6c 20 6f 70 65  |Minimize all ope|

$ hexdump -C libshowdesktop.so | grep "the desktop"
    000044a0  6f 77 20 74 68 65 20 64  65 73 6b 74 6f 70 00 00  |ow the desktop..|

## Aso, IF WANTED, do the same commands w/ the other tooltip text, to locate address of the text shown when desktop is in shown state.

## edit it out with 00's
$ hexedit libshowdesktop.so
    Now in the hexeditor, press ENTER and I typed in 4480 (my address in the dump output, see above, you need yours!) at the "New position ? 0x" prompt.
    It should take you to the location and in the ASCII (right column) you should see your tooltip text.  Just 00 out the whole phrase, until the last character.
   Then press CTRL+X , Yes to save.

## make a copy in place with *.orig appended for just in case
$ sudo cp /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/plugins/libshowdesktop.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/plugins/libshowdesktop.so.orig

## move the modded version in place
$ sudo mv libshowdesktop.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/plugins/libshowdesktop.so

## Then, restart the panel:
$ xfce4-panel -r

Finally just re-add the show desktop plugin to the panel.  If no issues, should be no tooltips on it.

Maybe a feature request on that plugin ;-)

If you still have problems, I can help if I can know more details.

Added later 14 h 34 min 13 s:
Of course, you could do away with the panel plugin and just use hotkeys and/or scripts suppose ;-) https://askubuntu.com/questions/807919/ … ow-desktop

Last edited by generated110 (2026-01-22 01:10:38)