View Pages in permission levels

In an attempt to prevent users from seeing the 'Site Content' in the cog icon menu in a sharepoint site, I found somewhere that one should assign users a restricted view site permission level. This didn't work - the dummy user I'm testing it is still able to see 'Site Content'. Then I've also found a suggestion to create a custom permission level and ensure that 'View Pages' is not ticked. I've done it but then the user has no access to the sharepoint site at all? I've created this custom level permission on 'site permissions' 

Please advise. Thank you