Removing applications from Show Applications without uninstalling

I do some Android development on my Ubuntu installation, because of it I need JavaJDK installed.

That's all fine, except for some reason the JavaJDK has now something like 15 different icons in my "Show Applications" list that I cannot remove.

I, of course, don't want to uninstall any of them in fear Java might stop working completely, so just a way to remove them from "Show Applications" would be good enough for me.

How would I do that? I know these are .desktop files somewhere on my system, but I can't seem to find them.

This has been plaguing me for a while, my Show Application window is just full of garbage I can't remove

Application launchers shown in Activities or Applications overview are usually located either in /usr/share/applications/ (system-wide applications) or ~/.local/share/applications/ (for current user) as .desktop files.

You can hide an individual launcher from Activities or Applications overview by adding an extra

NoDisplay=true

line to the corresponding .desktop file or by deleting the .desktop file altogether.

It is generally not advisable to edit the .desktop file located in /usr/share/applications/. Instead copy the file to ~/.local/share/applications/ first and make the necessary changes to the copied file.