I have this screenshot from somewhere around April 2025, I thought the new design with the vertical | separators in Dolphin looked very modern and absolutely stunning to be quite honest. I loved them but at some point they were reverted back to arrow > separators which I feel looks really dated and no where near as visually aesthetic as the vertical tabs. Of course this is my personal preference and opinion but I would like to know if there’s a way to switch back to this design because for me this was one of my favourite design changes in Dolphin by far…
Would appreciate any help in this regard. (and also a big thank you to whoever made this design change in the first place, I totally agree with this! )
Your screenshot strikes me as looking more like tabs than a path… so I definitely don’t like that. My general feeling (not thinking too much here) is that it looks like an older and clunkier kind of UI choice.
Vertical bars are definitely neutral - like items in a list, or tab separators - and do not imply a parent-child relationship. Chevrons guide you along the path.
Also, there’s the question of consistency… slashes would also be acceptable, but they’re reserved more for the text mode than breadcrumbs. The ‘other’ alternative would be to have a choice as with a Tide prompt in fish (or p10k) to have path separators represented with fading, or slanted, or rounded, or pointed shapes (and solid colours to make those clear)… though I find that noisy, and in my terminal I have it clear as day, but simple in nature… Perhaps an alternative symbol I wouldn’t mind would be something like the small arrow (my prompt) which would be possibly nicer than the chevron, but I digress.
If we were using more skeumorphic designs, then I’d argue that more variations would be feasible - but the chevron is a very basic functional symbol.
It’s not really a question of style - rather than the word ‘dated’ I would say ‘timeless’.
If anything, the vertical bar harks back to older and less refined UI design that I remember clearly.
I still think that the vertical separators look amazing and would love if there was an option or a theme to change them back to that.
But thank you for sharing your opinion as well. Different people have different views on the things that they like, many people may dislike the vertical tabs but there are many people who like them a lot (like myself)
Skeuomorphic themes I do miss, I’d like to see the return from totally flat theming… I like the fact that highlighting brings up a totally 3D response, but the path markers are pretty standard small arrows.
So it appears that Kvantum opts for the small chevrons (which I much prefer) but that it’s part of the code, not something affected by theming.
Similarly, looking at Breeze and then on to the more feature/settings rich ‘Klassy’, these options aren’t user-selectable…
I vehemently disagree with your vertical tab-style, but I think options to choose a character would be nice:
Home > Desktop
Home ⮞ Desktop
Home ➤ Desktop
Home 🡺 Desktop
Home 🢧 Desktop
And then if they are ‘tabs’ some choices of shapes for the leading/trailing edges… but generally, chevrons rule the roost. I quite like the top grey option here, it’d look lovely as a skeuomorphic (Kvantum style) design.
Application styles are an area where theming is much more limited - as you can see only a few options on Pling.com and many of those are just ancient…
IDK - maybe someone else can weigh in here and explain why the option is pretty much fixed.
Hmm… Skeuomorphic designs and themes do look interesting though… I also wouldn’t mind seeing more themes / icons etc… along those lines.
That’s great to hear! otherwise we may not be having this discussion in the first place!
I really honestly loved the vertical tab design a lot and was sad to see it go. I wish I could get it back again. But it is a matter of taste in the end. Some people eat pizza with ketchup for example which I am completely opposed to… but it makes for a fun conversation starter sometimes.
Now this here is something interesting that you posted! I do like the look of this, it’s a midway solution between the chevrons and the vertical tabbed style (with the advantages of both) and I think it does look pretty neat. It would be awesome to have something like this as the default style in dolphin. Nice find!
I would totally vote for something like this if any KDE developers happen to see this… *wishful thinking*
Aye, I hope Union turns out to be a massive success… If done well it could really elevate KDE to the next level (I can’t wait to see a preview of it) there are so many ridiculously talented people out there in the community that will hopefully make a lot of cool stuff with it.
That combined with being able to save your current custom global theme in Plasma 6.6 is going to be absolutely epic.
I hope at that time someone *ehem* makes a new address bar theme in Union like the tabbed one above…
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AweSome KUrlNavigatorButton project! 
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