The IR Remote Listener
In Ubuntu, background processes are managed by the systemd init system. One of the more obscure daemons you might find running on a standard installation is the irtimeld service. This daemon is specifically designed to handle infrared (IR) communication, acting as a listener for specialized IR receivers often built into older media center PCs, specific models of laptops, or external USB IR dongles used for remote controls.
If you are building a dedicated Home Theater PC (HTPC) and plan to use an old-school infrared remote control to navigate your media interface (like Kodi or Plex), this daemon is necessary to interpret those IR signals. However, the vast majority of modern desktop PCs, laptops, and especially headless cloud servers do not possess infrared hardware, nor do their users intend to control them via an IR remote. If your machine lacks an IR receiver, or if you simply don’t use one, having the irtimeld daemon running in the background is a completely unnecessary allocation of system memory and CPU cycles. Disabling it is a standard step in streamlining a modern Linux installation.
How to Disable the Irtimeld Service
You can permanently stop this daemon from starting using standard systemctl commands.
- Open your Ubuntu Terminal.
- To stop the service immediately during your current session, run:
sudo systemctl stop irtimeld.service- To permanently disable the service so it never starts automatically on future boots, run:
sudo systemctl disable irtimeld.service- To guarantee that no other media application or dependency can accidentally trigger the service to start up again, you should mask it:
sudo systemctl mask irtimeld.serviceThe IR remote listener daemon is now completely neutralized and will no longer consume resources on your machine.