Customizing the Gnome 3 Applications Menu with Alacarte

The Gnome 3 Applications menu can contain launchers to all the applications you installed, but showing all of them can bring a drawback in performance, especially when you search for one in particular or at startup.

The solution is to display only the launchers you need and hide/remove the rest.

Also, some system updates tend to duplicate some of your launchers, so knowing how to remove/hide them can make your life easier.

Gnome 3 Activities Applications Panel

You can easily customize the visible launchers by using the Gnome menu editor Alacarte:
1)Open a terminal console (Ctrl + Alt +t)
2)Type:

alacarte 

This should open the Gnome Menu Editor like in the picture below:

Showing/Hiding Applications

In the middle window you can see two columns: Show and Item. 

If you uncheck the checkbox on the Show column the item will no longer be visible when you will enter the Applications Menu.

You can also delete and add new applications to the Applications menu:

• To add a new launcher, click on the New Item button to the right. This will trigger a dialog like in the image below.
• To remove a application, select it in the central window and then click on the Delete button to the right. Remember, once a launcher is deleted there is no turning back, so use this option with caution.
• To add a new menu (like Accessories, Education, etc), click on the New Menu button to the right.
• To see what's behind a launcher click the Properties button on the right. The dialog triggered will be similar to the one in the image below.