How can I hide the on-screen buttons but keep the status bar

Question

I have a Galaxy Nexus (rooted, if that helps) and I want to disable the on-screen buttons (back, home, apps), also called the Navigation Bar. Now there are plenty of apps (e.g. Hide Bottom Bar) that remove the buttons, but since they are based on killing some Android process (I believe), they also remove the Status Bar (on top of the screen).

Now I would like to keep the status bar, but only remove the on-screen buttons (because I would like to use gestures instead). Any way to achieve this?

Answer 1

I found the answer here - it's a matter of adding

qemu.hw.mainkeys=1

to /system/build.prop (root required).

Answer 2

There are several roms with this feature baked into them CM10.1 being one of them

But if you like the rom you currently have then I'd go with Stefan's answer