Disable Online Content Fetching in Ubuntu 14.04 Search

Disabling Online Shopping Suggestions in Unity Dash

By default, the Unity Dash search functionality includes online shopping suggestions, such as those from Amazon, within its results. Users may prefer to exclude these online suggestions for reasons relating to either bandwidth conservation or enhanced privacy.

This feature can be readily disabled through a simple command-line procedure.

Accessing the Terminal

To begin, open a Terminal window by pressing the key combination Ctrl + Alt + T. This will launch the command-line interface.

At the prompt, enter the following command and then press Enter to execute it:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses remote-content-search ‘none’

Important Note: Linux systems are case-sensitive. Therefore, the command must be typed exactly as presented above. Furthermore, when instructions indicate text should be typed, do not include the surrounding quotation marks unless explicitly stated.

If the command executes successfully, you will be returned to the prompt without any error messages.

Confirming Command Execution and Closing the Terminal

To close the Terminal window, simply type “exit” at the prompt and press Enter.

Applying the Changes

For the modification to take effect, a user log-out and subsequent log-in is required. Select the Log Out option from the system menu, which is typically located in the upper-right corner of the screen.

You will be presented with options to either lock the screen or log out. Choose the Log Out option.

Verifying the Change

After logging back into your system, click the Search button positioned at the top of the Unity bar to access the Unity Dash. Enter a search term into the search field.

Observe that the displayed results now consist solely of applications, files, and folders residing locally on your computer. Remote search results will no longer be included.

Re-enabling Online Search Results

Should you wish to reinstate the inclusion of remote search results, open a Terminal window and enter the following command at the prompt, then press Enter:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses remote-content-search ‘all’

Disabling remote sources during searches can lead to improved search result loading speeds.