Add a global shortcut to restore last-known-good display configuration
Plasma currently has no single shortcut or action to recover from accidental display-related changes. When a user ends up in a broken or unexpected display state, recovery requires identifying which subsystem caused the problem and using the corresponding fix:
Zoom desktop effect → Meta+0
This post (Debian stable's KDE screen suddenly became "larger" than the actual screen) is a good example of a gap in Plasma worth filing as a wishlist on bugs.kde.org: there’s no single “panic button” to reset display state. Recovering from an accidental change means knowing which subsystem caused it — zoom, scaling, monitor layout, rotation, overview mode — each with its own fix in its own menu. If you don’t know what triggered it, you end up doing exactly what you did: hunting through every setting.
Other desktops handle this more gracefully. GNOME has Super+Ctrl+D to show/restore the
Doesn’t the majority of display configuration changes open a modal which resets the option after some seconds if no active confirmation is given?
Regarding subsystems the like of zoom and overview mode: they always have a counter-action one most certainly knows if they used the subsystem in the first place. But I understand that one could zoom or enter in overview by accident and would not know the counter-action; in this case, how would the user know that a panic button exists in the first place?
but i don’t know how that would affect the accessibility aspect of the feature when someone is using zoom and then also needs to ESC out of what they are doing, without affecting the zoom.
seems like that could be a problem for those users.
Yes, if a user has, by mistake entered the zoom mode, the user may not know the counter-action, so what we have actual done (yes, I had help someone to fix the issue) is try “best guess”, which has been “double esc”. crtl-z would also be an option, but I guess, this would more be assumed with the undo of actual changes, which might not be, what the user wants.
In some IDE there is “double shift” to get a general search and esc in most cases means “get me out here”. So to me it seems intuitive to switch to a “save mode” or “screen recovery” with “double esc”.
Yes, single esc might be used for many other action, but as fare as I know “double esc” is not yet been used anywhere. This would be reserved for all “no data change system recovery goto safe mode actions”. If there would be more function to add (e.g. switch off a touch screen after it is doing stupid stuff without user action because it it broken) a fallback to some core input devices could also be a function that should be callable with “double esc”.
… or maybe a floating menu with a low level selection towards a safe mode. E.g. if the mouse or touch screen is broken, to use only the keyboard or if the keyboard is broken, use to only the mouse to select a emergency secure data process.
Qt Creator uses sequential Esc presses to progressively exit/hide tool panes. In theory, “panic” double-Esc may interfere with this; but the two shortcuts can be discerned by having “panic” Esc presses in quick succession (Qt Creator only expects no other buttons are pressed between Esc presses, no double-press timeout).
You mean, that e.g. after reaching the Zoom desktop effect for the first time by mistake a floating button is shown on the screen for e.g. 20 sec that says "you have switch to the Zoom desktop effect by pressing Meta + = . Press OK to confirm it. (With a “never ask again” checkbox) . To reset use Meta + 0. If the OK is not pressed, the screen is returned to the previous settings. This would also solve the issue.
Nevertheless I would suggest to reserve a “panic mode” key pair such as double esc for an easy reach of a “save my data and get my out here” mode. This could be reserved for cases where there is a real hardware issue such as notebook screen broken and the user want to switch to an external monitor or a touch screen is doing stupid random stuff e.g. because the user dropped coffee on it. This would be the cases where a fast and easy “panic button” e.g. fast double esc could be helpful to save some work.
I’d say a permanent “X” button or a set of buttons to further zoom in and out appearing when the zoom level is not 0. This would avoid users needing to know about the “panic mode”, leaving the “panic mode” for something else.
Maybe there should be an option to enable/disable the accessibility zoom in the “user initial setup” process. The wizard page where you do this could remind you what the keyboard controls for it are, if you have it enabled.
If we are only concerned with the zoom effect, then a (maybe semi-transparent) text of “Press Meta(win key)+0 to exit zoom mode” in the corner, which maybe hides itself on mouse-over, should do the trick in a simpler way.
icon to appear somewhere visible on screen whenever zoom is active