Access Title Bar Application Menu from the keyboard /rant

[sanjibukai]

Hello everybody,

I’m using KDE since a couple of months (switched from i3)…
I’m experiencing regular freezes and the system stability is not even comparable to what I was used to with i3… But it was not the same hardware…

Anyway, on KDE Plasma, it seems there is two kind of applications styling that have different behaviours/settings…

For example I set the following Window Decorations in the settings:

And as you can see on the following images some app follow that rule (VS Code at the right in this example, but Konsole Terminale, Firefox, Dolphin File Explorer and many other apps are like that) and some don’t (Vivaldi on the left and below in this example):

I guess that the ones that are following my settings are the one that is native to KDE Plasma, am I right?

Also notice how the Ctrl+m shortcut that actually displays or hide the Title Bar does not work for “native windows” but only on Vivaldi and the like windows… (you can see the Title Bar enabled on the middle browser window).

At first there was even not any menu to display but I somehow enabled the title bar widget and now I have the title bat menu enabled on “native windows”, as shown here:

My main concern is that I didn’t find any way to enable this menu with the keyboard!

For Vivaldi for example a simple press to Alt enable the menu and allow me to navigate with the keyboard as shown here:

It works both when the title bar is hidden (the popup menu appears as shown on the left window) and also when the title bar is shown (the menu item is highlighted in blue as shown in the middle window).

Another shortcut I found is Alt+F3, but this one only displays the windows control menu as shown below:

This one works for every indeed in every windows but it’s somehow the most useless menu I ever find…
(I mean why not simply use the shortcuts to manipulate the windows instead of using a shortcut to show a menu)…

Anyway, what I really need is to be able to activate that Application Context Menu from the keyboard.
Please, can anyone tell me it’s possible and how to do it actually…

Also what people are thinking about that? I find this kind of basic lack of good UX very frustrating…

Not even mentioning that many people want to have the Title Bar menu not displayed as an icon but actually spread across this top bar. Which I also find very frustrating to not have…
However, since (in my case) I will mainly use the keyboard for enabling or not that menu I don’t care to not have the menu items spread and have them within an icon…
It will be even better to have it as an icon in order to not clutter the top bar… But if only it’s possible to use the shortcut.
Otherwise it’s one click longer and harder (since it needs some precision to click exactly at this spot)

As a side topic, can anyone know why there is a discrepancy of behaviour between application like that?

Anyway thank you very much for any thought.

Also, I know that this is not really a concern related to Manjaro itself, but more generally to KDE I guess…

[Ben]

I use Material decoration with inline menu.
I agree, this can be an issue - but for me not so much now. I accept Firefox and Vivaldi (always issues doing their own thing with menu’s - not really a problem).

2 sources:

aur/material-kwin-decoration-git    
Material-ish window decoration theme for KWin, with LIM support.

chaotic-aur/material-kwin-decoration-git
Material-ish window decoration theme for KWin, with LIM support.

And if you don’t wanna see it unless you mouse over, settings!!!

Though you’re right - you can’t do Alt_F to get the ‘file’ menu in apps that don’t fit the bill.

Also the whole ‘mouse driven desktop’ idea is a bit silly - clicking icons and menu’s - when you can use mouse GESTURES instead.

So I click one thumb button to pick up for moving the window under the cursor, and the other thumb button will resize it… a quick slash of the mouse can also maximise/fullscreen/minimise or simply maximize horizontally/vertically.

Gestures beat ‘mouse driven’ by a very long chalk.

I hope some of these ideas lessen your pain.

But remember, ALL desktops suck - just different ways

[stargazer]

@sanjibukai

Vivaldi

Vivaldi Menu
Click the “V” > View > Horizontal Main Menu or ctrl–m.
alt-f works.

KDE has maintained the consistent window paradigm and across applications. Some applications might hide the menu, but if you find the right key sequence, you can enable it. It’s a frequently asked question on the Net (i.e., menu missing), so finding the answer isn’t too difficult.

On my keyboard there is key on the right side, right of the Window’s key (Super_R), and it brings up an application’s context menu. xmodmap -pke and xev describes it as the menu key.

[Ben]

Yes, I don’t use Vivaldi too much - and rarely use the menu, but in the case of Vivaldi you can directly pull menu’s with the ALT+ (letter).

[sanjibukai]

I guess I miss explained my concern…
I don’t have any concern with Vivaldi (and other app that behave like this) where both ctrl–m (for showing the menu) and alt–f (for actually making the menu poped up) work just fine.

I just simply want to be able to make the application menu popping up with my keyboard also on all the other “Kde native” applications, like the Konsole terminal, the Dolphin file explorer, VS Code in this case, and many more…

@stargazer

It’s a frequently asked question on the Net (i.e., menu missing), so finding the answer isn’t too difficult.

Well, I for sure agree that it’s a frequently asked question (when for a simple trivial thing it shouldn’t heck!)…
But anyway I’m still missing to find my answer to how I can access the Application menu from the keyboard!

[sanjibukai]

Yeah but I don’t have issues with those apps…
Only for KDE base apps…

And if I have to use the mouse (which in fact is a trackball in my case) often, indeed mouse gestures can be helpful but you can’t define a gesture for every action of every application…

Sometimes it’s totally fine to just pop up the application menu and choose a one time action…

And anyway, where you have a keyboard even gestures is too much work!

[Ben]

@sanjibukai

And anyway, where you have a keyboard even gestures is too much work!

I think that largely depends on where you’re sitting, or how you’re using it. When I’m at the keyboard I can use it well, but I don’t have a traditional setup with a desk so often it’s more convenient to use a mouse, and at other times a multimedia k400.