How to make the taskbar of a theme transparent and some other general KDE questions

Hello everyone,

After troubling to make my 34 inch external monitor work, scaling issues and performance issues with Nvidia GPU. I have finally fixed major part of them and I fixed the scaling issue with " kcmshell5 fonts " command on terminal and forcing the dpi to 96 made all my scaling issues on title bars…etc fixed. During those three days, I tried Kubuntu, Open Suse Tumbleweed, KDE Neon…etc and finally was able to install Manjaro KDE with my problems relatively fixed on X11. I prefer Manjaro for now as I am using the Gnome version on my internal hdd, so I am getting used to pamac commands, especially I like the pamac search function, so as a noob, confusing myself with opensuse or kubuntu package installers was not necessary. So I am pretty happy now and have new questions.

I sometimes install themes from the GUI, but sometimes I find some themes on github and I install them but I don’t know where to put all the folders. I mean, the global themes if i am not wrong, are placed in /usr/.shared/plasma/desktopthemes but how about the other theme folders such as for plasma, icons, window decorations…etc?

I am using a global theme called Wings, and I like it. I moved the taskbar to the top, and made it floating, so far so good. But it is a solid theme on taskbar and transparent on dolphin. I would like to make the background of the taskbar of the theme to transparent and if possible without blur. I would also like to play with the roundness of the corners of the taskbar and it may be even more complicated but I would like to put an outline to the taskbar. So for this, I have to modify the css files I suppose. Is there any guide on this which explains which lines I should change or add?

Date and time on taskbar are written on two lines with the time on top and date on the bottom. I would like to make them one single line, like in MacOS systems. I think that for that I should use custom format, again for these, is there any guide? Since I am not a coder, I don’t know those coding and formatting languages. I modified some stuff in the past with some common sense, but I still need some guide, somewhere to start to learn some of this things to be able to modift things further as I like.

Is there any way to hide the top bar (task bar) when the apps are maximized and make it visible only when I force my mouse to the top of the screen such as how they do on the docks? I am using the only icon taskbar.

Can I make the icons of the taskbar smaller?

Are there any alternative taskbar panels that I can download, try and experiment?

Is there any more “simple looking” terminal that I can use, such as the one on Gnome and add transparency to it?

On Kubuntu, on my Nvidia X Settings panel, I had the option to choose the performance mode. On Manjaro, I don’t see that setting, I only have the powermizer which forces the high frequency to my GPU. Since I had seen the powermizer on Kubuntu as well, I suppose that both do different stuff. Is there any way to add this option to Manjaro KDE Nvidia Settings?

Thank you!

Hi there.

I don’t use KDE but there are some very useful tutorials online - written & YouTube etc. It sounds like you need to spend some time with KDE, looking at the various options. There’s almost nothing you can’t tweak.

As far as the transparent task bar, here is the first link that came up in a duckduckgo search

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1173618/how-to-make-kde-plasma-taskbar-panel-transparent

My advice would be to spend some time with it, looking at the various settings - you will find your way. Enjoy the learning curve - it’s a great DE from what I hear.

Ruziel :slight_smile:

Hi @Astonish,

My “taskbar” is transparent on both my screens. The way I did it:

  1. Go to the launcher, and open System Settings.
  2. In the System Settings window, go to WorkspaceWindow ManagementWindow Rules.
  3. Give the Rule a name, mine is Bottom paznel transparency. As you can see
  4. Feel free to change the percentages, but the Window matching values should be the same.
  5. Click Apply to profit.

Imgur

Hope this helps!

Hello @ruziel ,

Thank you for your reply! To be honest, I am having fun with it, but I am still trying to make it run as smooth as Windows or at least as Gnome. But since it is still very usable - trying to still tweak it for it to work smoother with my nvidia card - in the meantime I am having fun personalizing it. Obviously I keep breaking it and sometimes fixing it and sometimes reinstalling lol.

I had already checked that link and tried the first solution but unfortunately it made my icons transparent as well. The metadata part, I tried, but I could not succeed. I will try it again then, I had not added the extra lines it was asking, so it may be the reason, let me check! Thank you again both for your help and good wishes!

@Mirdarthos

Hello and thank you for your reply as well! I appreciate all the detailed advice. I have already tried that technique yesterday but it ended up making my icons transparent as well! Is it the same for you or to make your taskbar icons non-transparent, do You use some trick?

thank you in advance!

1 Like

There are community-created widgets (right click desktop > enter edit mode > add widgets > get new widgets), one of them is clock that goes on a single line.

Right click on a panel (which is what task bars/docks are called in KDE), select “enter edit mode”, click the gear icon, select “windows can cover”.

Right click on a panel, select “enter edit mode”, you can change the height of the panel.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by that? My guess is you are asking for latte-dock (warning! no longer maintained) as it was the only really popular alternative to the stock panels. My other guess is that you are referring to the layout, which you can just configure on your own in the edit mode.

I assume you are using a dual GPU laptop (optimus). The “performance mode” just makes every program on your computer use your dGPU (discrete GPU, the powerful one) as opposed to the default iGPU (integrated GPU, the weak one). This shouldn’t really be necessary, and will cause a significant power drain and generate a lot of heat. You can just run the most graphics-intensive programs using prime-run. If you are wondering about the power profile “performance mode” for your CPU (accessible from the battery icon in the tray), you will need to install power-profiles-daemon to make it work.