Can an icon on the desktop be temporarily "freely placed"?

Help
1

The KDE Plasma desktop appears to use a locked “grid” for the icons. On Windows, there was an option to disable this so that you could pixel-perfectly place icons. (I don’t remember if it stuck the way you had it when you then switched back to the grid mode.)

I normally do want the grid behaviour, but for one of the icons (yet again the Wastebin), I would like to place it pixel-perfectly rather than according to the “invisible grid”, in order to match up its location with the actual trash can on the wallpaper. (An old photo taken from our kitchen back in the day, showing the outside view of our beloved house.)

Please note that I am fully aware of the Wastebin widget and the fact that this can be freely placed in “edit mode”, but due to the many annoyances with this widget, I have abandoned its use and opted for the “normal” trashcan icon instead. Hopefully, it’s still possible to fine-adjust the location of icons, without also entering into a mode where all icons lose their “grid”?

2

There isn’t currently an option to disable snap-to-grid on the Plasma desktop.

Relevant links:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/b4m7kd/comment/eja0kbr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=358418

3

if edited the main.qml file and changed the spacing value from 6 to 1 (the variable names were slightly different) and i can now place my trash can widget closer to the corner of the screen, which is nice

didn’t seem affect the placement of icons at all tho

and i assume i’ll have to edit this file each time there is an update to plasma at all.

but this is nice

Screenshot_20231011_094856

4

But this is not the widget. I specifically pointed that out. The widgets can be placed pixel-perfectly, entirely independently of the icons.

5

widgets will snap to a grid as well (they also move after reboot, but that’s a different thing) and i was not able to place the trash can widget that close to the corner before i made the edit… it would either snap back a distance away or it would be absorbed by the panel, which i didn’t want.

but you know what, now that i’m looking at it, it’s not terrible.

Screenshot_20231012_123323

i might try living with this for a while

6

Maybe I misremember. Either way, the widget cannot be used due to its many problems. That’s why I use a normal icon.

7

wasn’t one of those problems that the remove widget and the empty trash were too close together?

fyi, there is longer a remove widget item on the context menu because it has been absorbed by the panel, there is only now the enter edit mode item.

8

That issue is the same with the actual icon. I constantly accidentally delete the wastebin icon and have to recreate it because I tried to empty it but actually deleted it. Still, I cannot use the widget because of its numerous problems (it “doesn’t take up space”, causing a mess of icons placed on top/underneath it, it opens with one click instead of double, and other issues I can’t remember now). The widget is useless.