Fix task bar to bottom of primary screen, even if replica is taller

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1

I have a setup in which I use a graphics tablet as replica of the primary screen.

My setup is something like this:

> xrandr --output DisplayPort-0 --mode 2560x1440 --primary --output HDMI-A-0 --mode 2560x1600

The primary work are is the DisplayPort monitor, and this is where I would like to have the panel (task bar) at the bottom.

The tablet is connected to the HDMI port. Since the tablet vertical display resolution is taller, and both show the same content, I accept that there is some unused space of 160 pixels vertically at the bottom.

The problem now is that KDE/Plasma places the panel at the very bottom of the 2560x1600 area, so that I don’t see it anymore on my main screen.

How can I move the screen upwards?

2

The problem is that your xrandr command does not specify how to position the screens in relation to each other. The fact the xrandr - apparently - by default is positioning them one on top of the other is quite surprising to me.

I was going to say that you can use the Plasma Display Configuration settings page to position your screens correctly, but annoyingly the settings page also insists that the smaller screen should be in the center of the larger screen.

If you use xrandr, you should also use the --pos argument to set the position of the second screen in relation to the first one. I’m not sure how to use it as I haven’t used xrandr in years, but it might be something like

xrandr --output DisplayPort-0 --mode 2560x1440 --pos 0x160 --primary --output HDMI-A-0 --mode 2560x1600 --pos 0x0

I personally recommend using kscreen-doctor for this as (a) it is display protocol agnostic and will continue to work well when you move to Wayland and (b) is much easier to figure out because its output just tells you what parameters to set.

The same command as above, with kscreen-doctor may look like this:

kscreen-doctor output.1.mode.2560x1440 output.1.position.0,160 output.1.priority.1 output.2.mode.2560x1600 output.2.position.0,0

But YMMV.