KDE Improvements for Remote Control (Air Mouse) usage

Brainstorm
1

So my use case is a bit unique, but I’m using KDE as the frontend for an HTPC (I was previously using gnome but HDR and other reasons had me change and I’m very happy so far). The catch comes in that I navigate using an air mouse, and some of the functionality can be improved for this use cases.

1. Single Hotkey Task Switching

So on an air mouse using combination keys is rather tricky for quick navigation. mapping a single key to the task switcher would make this much easier, but currently you need to hold the modifier while you press tab to switch.

How I see this happening for an air mouse would be:

Option 1:

  1. The first time the “forward” or “backward” key is pressed, open the task switcher
  2. Every subsequent time “forward” or “backward” is pressed cycle in that direction.
  3. Press Enter or mouse click to select active window (regardless of where mouse is, this can be made more obvious by hiding the mouse when arrow keys are being used for navigation)
  4. Press Esc or mouse back to cancel

Option 2:

  1. The first time the “forward” or “backward” key is pressed, open the task switcher
  2. Every subsequent time “forward” or “backward” is pressed cycle in that direction.
  3. Press Enter or have a configurable timeout that will select the active window on timeout (this would be similar to how TV’s do it, and the timeout resets on each “forward” or “backward”)
  4. Press Esc or mouse back to cancel

2. Overview

Probably the only thing I really miss from Gnome is the Expo View, which is similar.

The key differences are the following, which would all make navigation take fewer clicks and provide more options from one screen.
(This could also benefit controller navigation.)

The features are as follows:

  1. Search bar used global search and prioritised apps, not just filtering for open windows.
  2. Desktop taskbar (all panels for that matter) also became visible, giving numerous options for navigation (even if I would have to use the mouse for those and not arrow keys which I think would become unruly anyway).
  3. There is currently no way to get back to the Search bar just using arrow key
  4. Nit: the search bar doesn’t show its actively selected when you open the Overview, even though it is.