Missing window border when disabling compositing

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Hello,

When I disable compositing with Alt+Shift+F12, I notice that windows lose their window borders. There’s a 1 pixel wide black border around every window which disappears. As a result, it can be difficult to tell the boundaries of a window that is in focus. Is there any way to bring it back? I’ve looked into the settings (window decorations, application style, etc.) but could not find the option anywhere.

If compositing is enabled, I do not have this issue. The window border comes back and the drop shadow also makes windows easy to distinguish.

The reason I would like to disable compositing occasionally is that this is a very old laptop with a 3rd gen intel GPU. It runs well enough with compositing in 1600x900, but when I connect it to my 3440x1440 ultra-wide screen, the performance drop is significant and the system feels much less responsive. Disabling compositing makes it feel more responsive.

This applies to all windows, except a few weird electron ones like MS Teams. So I don’t think it’s the same as discussed in other topics which are specific to plasma shell.

I am running:
Kubuntu 24.04
Plasma version 5.27.11
Qt 5.15.13
Kernel 6.8.0
Machine is a Thinkpad T430 with an Intel GPU and an Nvidia GPU (disabled due to driver problems with the latest kernel)

(of course, the real solution would be to get a newer machine :))

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Hi - Sorry if this doesn’t apply without compositing (haven’t been able to try it out myself), but would the window border setting under Colors & Themes > Window Decorations work there?

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Tried any other decorators yet?

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Looks like I missed this drop down menu, I feel so stupid. This solved the problem, thank you! Although in my case this menu appears in the bottom area

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I once spent an hour trying to troubleshoot weird performance drops on a gaming laptop, where it seemed to keep acting like it was on battery and wasn’t plugged in even though I looked at the wall and saw the AC adapter plugged in. Of course, if I had looked at where the adapter connected to the computer… :laughing: (Don’t feel stupid for asking for help!)

And your Settings screen looks different because Kubuntu 24.04 uses an old version of KDE Plasma, but I’m glad the functionality was similar enough to work for you!

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