On Mac OS you have the WiFi applet but you can also control the WiFi from the control center. And you are free to choose what you want to use. KDE is all about choices so this seems like a good way to implement on KDE. And yeah KDE is that last major DE to be lacking a control center.
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I would be down with that. Its a good idea. There are a lot of things that Plasma is missing, or seem to be really dated in appearance and ergonomics. Online accounts being another one. And IMO Ksettings (and most configuration dialogs) is an ergonomic disaster. I hate the changes they made to it with Plasma 6, especially the big long monolithic listā¦ gaaaaa.
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Thereās also:
I feel that Android have done a great job at quick settings(not the miui like roms which is replica of iOS), implementing it that way will help for those using plasma on touch tablets type PCs too. But as like all it needs customisation.
But instead of implementing this as new feature. The existing system tray popup menu can have some design changes to achieve similar things.
That way existing system tray icons actions like middle click for wifi off etc can be used as well.
Just improve the UI of the system tray popup menu and itāll be helpful too instead of implementing something totally new
Yes this is what I am saying add it as on optional feature and see how many people use it . 
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I think in the three examples, only the Gnome one makes sense. IIRC, it contains everything, including 3rd-party programs, within a single panel.
Both the Windows one and the KDE one are bad in that they have duplicate icons like āwifiā and āvolumesā in both the control center and systray. Also, 3rd-party icons are in the systray, making them one-click-less, thus more āimportantā than system icons. Is that right?
To summarize, IMO if we are to have a control center, it must replace the systray, not co-living with it.
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Interesting take , 3rd party integration would be the kde way
Since Control Centre isnāt being updated here is a good replacement,
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The problem I have with the design group link or whatever is that perhaps somethings simply should not be aggregated into a system tray in the first place. Why should a clipboard live in the system tray, and what is preventing there from being a system tray area with a seperate quick settings menu contained within it like Gnome does with their panel rightside area and then the actual quicksettings display in the panel? You could even keep the individual menus for stuff like wifi in the overall menu through some sort of pinning to panel system, it preserves the ability to use 3rd party applets that would live in the system tray, and it simultaneously cleans up the system tray from the weird state itās in. Notice how Windows 11 follows a similar system to what I just came up with on my own, now that I think about it. A regular quick settings area like every other major desktop and mobile paradigm has combined with an area for applets. Notice how MacOS follows a similar concept. The only difference would be that Plasmaās implementation would have a more flexible layout.
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The individual toggles wouldnāt take up that much space within the grid, so the pinned toggles could be duplicated in the grid, and the benefit is that you reduce clutter in the panel from things like the sound menu and the battery/brightness widgets. A lot of applets take up a lot of space on smaller screens, quick settings save screen space.
I just donāt see the justification about clicks, as if clicks are the entire metric. Organization and convenience of multitasking factor in too, what if I want to change my brightness AND my volume quickly? What if I want to cut Bluetooth and Wifi?
It also allows Plasma to add more things that would be on/off toggles that donāt need a whole applet and menu.
To summarize: The system tray should be a separated into a quick settings drop down menu & tray and an aggregated tray connected to it with more applets like clipboard, vaults, and other third party apps. It modernizes KDE, and you could even promote applet development by making the new applet tray as a separate category for plasmoids to be promoted or whatever, panel applets vs desktop applets.
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I would disagree with those proposals. At least users should have option to set it the way they want. E.g. I really like the fact that I can have clipboard in system tray, and if I use DE where there isnāt one by default, I look for 3rd party programs or additional plugins to add it.
On my desktop PC, I have no need to change power, brightness, bluetooth, airplane modeā¦ that often (if at all), so thereās no need to have them grouped with bunch of other settings that I might use few times a day (volume, clipboard, network). As I know, no other DE has an option to set tray icons like in KDE (always shown, when relevant, always hidden, disabled), and to access hidden ones with one keystroke.
Windows 11 design is actually bad IMO. Before, I could click volume icon in tray, and quickly change output. Now you need more clicks for the same thing, even though icon is still there, taking the same space, but instead of volume, it opens this new control board
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I feel sick in my stomach every time I need to read āWinblowsā and how I should care about what crappy thing they do since 1981 that we should also do, especially after its decadence with Winblows 8 and on, please stop it.
I donāt want to see stuff I donāt need to see.
And I donāt care about GNOME, aka the tablet DE either.
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My proposal is to keep the tray for applets, and then have the actual drop down menu itself duplicate some pinned applets as well as have everything else, all in an Android/iOS/Mac/Windows 10/Windows 11/Chrome OS/Gnome/Plasma Mobile style (Notice how that covers literally like 99% of all users of desktop and mobile devices, the UX of quick settings is proven to work by the sheer widespread usage of it. Thatās a simple fact. Do you think the UI and UX designers at all those places are wrong? Itās a universal design because it works).
I think youāre being very inflammatory by bringing up the age old āGNOME IS A TABLET UIā trope.
Gnome has their opinions about UI design, and we live in an age of widespread mobile usage. Itās entirely reasonable for mobile design trends to cross-pollinate onto the desktop, because most people who have desktops also have phones and related UI/UX expierences improves the QoL for the user.
What gives you the right to define what is and isnāt desktop design?
Midle click, that should be off. That could lead to issues.
Have these 99% of users been given a choice? And I mean easy one like option to select it on first start, not hidden under some settings or extensions you need to search on forums to find out how to change it?
15 years ago, 99% of windows users had taskbar with window list and start menu with decent options. Now 99% of windows users have icon-only taskbar with some start thing, bunch of adds, news, programs they donāt want, but OS keeps them installing, etc. And 99% of them are not more efficient in their everyday work. 99% of PC users use their OS as it is, maybe only change a background.
Similar is with gnome, though itās hard to estimate number of users who moved away from it, to more PC optimized UI. But I think popularity of Linux Mint tells a lot, also stable usage and development of Mate, XFCE, LXQtā¦ and extensions for missing UI elements
This is not windows vs linux, gnome vs kde topic, but thereās a reason why some UI elements have been used for years and decades on PC, and why some users insist to have them. And so far, KDE offers that, I would say more than any other DE. Yes, we have PC in different formats than before (desktop, laptop, tablet, gaming handheld, home theater, home serverā¦), but that doesnāt mean they should share common UI. It means users should have options to configure it for their purpose. And again KDE is doing that in the best possible way, allowing me to have it on my 2-monitor desktop PC setup, my 13" laptop and my steam deck, each one set differently, and none of them like Mac OS, GNOME, Android or Windows 11.
If you look at screenshots of KDE usersā PCs on this or other forums, youāll see huge variety of setups unlike with any other DE. If that possibility is removed, usersā wish to use it might also go away.
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I seriously donāt want anything being inspired by the likes of Microsoft today; especially from operating systems as horrible as Winsuck 11. Or even Winsuck 10 which came with a ton of junk that came baked in with it; which pushed me to drop Windows after seeing that abomination called Winsuck 8.
And so, Windows 7 (when using Windows was considered to be a remotely sane idea) was the last version of Windows I ran back in 2016 for a reason.
I switched to Plasma (and actually settled on KDE Neon) because it has that Windows 7 look and feel; especially after I apply my preferred custom āaero glassā theme. So, Iād be happy if the desktop doesnāt have seriously wacky changes done to it.
Just putting this out there.
But if this an applet that is separate from the desktop that you can install, by all means, knock yourself out.
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I Agree with @dreaperxz on that. i think it should be a second applet. there could still be the good olā systray, for those who want it that way.
so the second, more Win11 like āControl Centerā (or what ever it should be called), could be systray-like icons, that open the same popup, no matter, which one is clicked.
There should still be the middleclick/scroll quicktoggles that exist now, like Volume, WiFi or BT, NightLight, whatever is configured.
in that popup would be Applets, organised in a system like the windows 10 tiles, Android top swipey control center and iOS control center.
The popup would follow the Plasmatheme, with its corner radii and everything
this is my view / kind of a summary of this whole thread, the way i read it ā¦
i probably forgot something, edit is likely 
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Chiming in that I personally do not like Control Centers. If one ships with KDE, Iāll likely never use it.
Extra clicks, and also less visual indicators on the panels for quick glances at current states (Is Wifi/BT connected? Is volume muted? No clicks, just glance).
System Tray is designed for that, as well as being able to hide icons you donāt need or show by condition (Shown when relevant). Plasma does a stellar job at this already.
That being said, it would be nice to have both options. It looks like the currently maintained Control Center widgets on store.kde work as they should, by setting states and values on the existing plasmoids. Is there anything that would be different if they were shipped with KDE as a ānativeā applet?
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