how do I remove a startup application from the command line?

Question

In Xubuntu, how do I remove a startup application that was set in Menu –> Setting –> Settings Manager –> Sessions and Startup without using the GUI? My startup command breaks the gui, and I need to disable it using the command line.

Answer 1

Quoting the Xfce Docs ("Some of my applications are always started when I login"):

You can also manually delete those files in ~/Desktop/Autostart and ~/.config/autostart.

For example: open a terminal, type

cd ~/.config/autostart
ls

then rm the files that you want to delete.

Answer 2

You can disable autostart entries by hiding them with a higher-precedence entry.

If you don't have it yet, create your own autostart folder:

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart

and then create .desktop files matching the names of the ones you want to disable from /etc/xdg/autostart (or other sources such as /usr/share/gnome/autostart).

For example, disabling print-applet:

cat > ~/.config/autostart/print-applet.desktop <<EOF
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Hidden=true
EOF

Answer 3

for example, to disable AnyDesk from starting up automatically on Ubuntu, you can follow these steps:

Open Terminal: Press Ctrl + Alt + T to open the terminal.

Remove AnyDesk from Autostart: You can remove the AnyDesk entry from the autostart directory. Run the following command to navigate to the autostart directory:

cd ~/.config/autostart

Check for AnyDesk Entry: List the files in the autostart directory to see if there is an entry for AnyDesk:

ls

If you see a file related to AnyDesk, such as anydesk.desktop, proceed to the next step.

Remove AnyDesk Autostart File: Remove the AnyDesk autostart file:

rm anydesk.desktop

Verify AnyDesk Service: To ensure that the AnyDesk service does not start automatically, you can disable the AnyDesk service using systemd. Run the following commands:

sudo systemctl stop anydesk.service
sudo systemctl disable anydesk.service