Keep Files From Showing Up In Unity (Dash) Or Other Programs That Use Zeitgeist With Activity Log Manager

Activity Log Manager (previously called "Zeitgeist Global Privacy" or "History Manager") is a new GUI tool that allows you to tweak the Zeitgeist history.

What's Zeitgeist?

"Zeitgeist logs user's activities and notifications (files opened, websites visited, conversations hold with other people, etc.) and makes the relevant information available to other applications". Starting with Ubuntu 11.04, Zeitgeist is installed by default in Ubuntu and is used by the new Unity menu called "Dash" (Applications / Files Places) as well as other applications such as Synapse, Sezen, Avant Window Navigator, DockBarX, Docky, Cairo Dock, Gnome Activity Journal and more. It will also be used in Gnome Shell.

Activity Log Manager

Activity Log Manager lets you delete part of the Zeitgeist history, blacklist some applications or prevent logging certain types of files as well as blacklist folders. This is useful if you want to keep some recent files from showing up in Dash (in Unity) or maybe just to exclude some private files or folders and so on.

Here are a few Zeitgeist Activity Log Manager screenshots with all the available options:

(Deleting Zeitgeist history)

(Blacklisting applications)

(Blacklisting certain filetypes or folders)

And here's a video I've just recorded demoing Activity Log Manager:

Install Activity Log Manager for Zeitgeist

Update: Zeitgeist Activity Log Manager is now available in a PPA so the installation instructions in this post have been updated.

Add the Zeitgeist PPA (available for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, 11.04 Natty Narwhal and 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot) and install Activity Log Manager and Zeitgeist 0.8 (Zeitgeist 0.8 is required for Activity Log Manager to work!) using the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zeitgeist/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
zeitgeist-daemon --replace
sudo apt-get install activity-log-manager

Make sure you run ALL the commands above or else Activity Log Manager will not work! For Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, you can skip the "sudo apt-get upgrade" and "zeitgeist-daemon --replace" commands because Oneiric already has the latest Zeitgeist version.

Now, to run Activity Log Manager, open your home folder and you should see a new "history-manager" directory - open it and double click the "activity-log-manager" file and select "Run".

Important: if you blacklist an application, certain file types or a folder, the files you've already accessed will still show up in Zeitgeist (and all the applications that use it). To clear the Zeitgeist history you must go to the History tab and select a timerange, then click the "Delete" button.

You can also disable all Zeitgeist logging if you want by clicking the button on the bottom right corner but this is not recommended since Dash depends pretty much on Zeitgeist.