How to remove the drop shadow from desktop icons text

Help
1

Ubuntu Studio: 24.04

Desktop Environment (if applicable):KDE Plasma Version 5.27.12

Problem Description:
Trying to remove the drop shadow on the text on the desktop icons…
There doesn’t seem to be any menu based option to do this…

What I’ve Tried:
I have tried editing the following file with Kate and searching for textShadow:
/usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.desktopcontainment/contents/ui/FolderItemDelegate.qml
and changed the value as per these instructions:
It contains the following two lines of code:

if ((frameLoader.textShadow && frameLoader.textShadow.visible) || fallbackRectangleBackground.visible) { return "#fff";

Change #fff to #00000000, then reboot or simply log out and back in, and the icon text will be invisible.

This change does indeed remove the icon text completely, but I would prefer to have the text without the drop shadow effect!
I suspect there is another piece of code in this file which will allow me to do what I want, but I am reluctant to try altering it in case I am unable to login again. I have created a Rescuezilla backup just in case…
Many thanks for any help!

2

The drop shadows on desktop icon text are pretty much a design choice, and improve readability on the desktop (especially regarding backgrounds with images/varying tones/brightnesses).

Text is hard coded to white with a shadow behind it for readability against different backgrounds; that’s something Dolphin doesn’t need to do (i.e. specific to deskop)… and so it’s better just to change your background to suit if you have a problem with the appearance…

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1 Like
3

Thanks for the reply - I have already changed the desktop background to a pale beige colour as my preference, but I really dislike the drop shadow effect!
I’ll keep digging away - there must be a way to set the font to just a plain dark colour :slightly_smiling_face:

4

Sure, it’s up to you to choose the easy way or the hard way… I’m happy with this ten second solution :wink:

Screenshot_20251031_150115
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5

OK, would you mind sharing with me how you did that please? That’s not your desktop, but I assume you’ve customised your desktop folder somehow???
That’s the effect I’m looking for, with dark text and no confounded drop shadows!

6

That IS my desktop. I just changed backgrounds, then I changed to a ‘beige’ wallpaper and enabled the ‘Folder View’ plasmoid which you can set up to point at any folder in your system.

Here I will browse my ‘Amiga’ icons, and if you actually look at the desktop that obviously is NOT mine, you should be able to see my browser with this post to verify:

Screenshot_20251031_233754
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:disguised_face:

7

OK, forgive my newbie ignorance , but now I’m confused. I set up the plasmoid and put a widget in the top bar on my screen, pointing to my desktop folder, but how do I then customise that to change the background etc.
I’ve tried to upload 3 photos of my desktop showing the plain desktop with no text under the icons and my desktop folder but not sure if they’ve uploaded or not - clicked on the upload button, selected the photos from my camera, but no confirmation that they actually arrived here and can’t see any indication here in my reply…..

8

I put the widget on the desktop - not the bar.

9

I seem to have found a workaround:
As mentioned, I did make the change of #fff to #000000 to change the text colour to black, but I also made these changes to the same file:

Changed the textcolour conmponent from black to white:



               Component {
                    id: textShadowComponent

                    DropShadow {
                        anchors.fill: label

                        z: 1

                        horizontalOffset: 1
                        verticalOffset: 1

                        radius: Math.round(4 * PlasmaCore.Units.devicePixelRatio)
                        samples: radius * 2 + 1
                        spread: 0.35

//                       color: "black"
                        color: "white"

                        opacity: model.isHidden ? 0.6 : 1

                        source: label

                        visible: !editor || editor.targetItem !== main
                    }
                }

And commented out this line



          Component.onCompleted: {
                if (root.isContainment && main.GridView.view.isRootView && root.GraphicsInfo.api === GraphicsInfo.OpenGL) {
                    frameLoader.textShadow = textShadowComponent.createObject(frameLoader);
 //                   frameLoader.iconShadow = iconShadowComponent.createObject(frameLoader);

I had already changed my desk top wallpaper to a light beige so now although there is a white backgound to the icon text, it fades almost invisibly into the desktop wall paper, so that no drop shadows appear…
I’ve tried to upload an image of my desktop as it now appears, but this doesn’t seem to work - I clicked on the upload icon in the menu bar above and navigated to my phone camera directory and selected the photo, but nothing happened :thinking: