Sometimes when i am working on my computer, I need to restart it many times and login to my Desktop Session. However, because I have a large number of applications configured to autostart, this makes it the process very slow and annoying. I do want these applications to autostart in a normal situation (upon first powerup), but not when I’m specifically testing my computer.
This is currently achievable with a hacky solution of modifying all the autostart desktop files to add a flag (X-KDE-autostart-condition kdelibs/kinit/README.autostart at 1c5b25966136b6099665477616fb4d38a98fd7ef · KDE/kdelibs · GitHub ) and adding a new desktop session which sets the flag to false in order to prevent autostart from activating. This is an annoying workaround as it involves editing every single desktop file, when I think there is an easier solution that can be implemented to achieve this same functionality.
I think a new feature which implements one of, or all of the following would be a nice QOL addition.
In system settings, under the autostart page, add a toggle at the top to disable or enable autostart, while still keeping all autostart application entries saved. This would allow the user to temporarily disable autostart if they know they will be rebooting frequently, and then enable it once finished.
In plasma-login-manager, add an option to ignore autostart applications on this specific login. This would let the user choose on login if they want autostart applications to be autostarted. This is most useful for one-off situations where you did not have the chance to toggle it in the system settings like described in point 1. By default this should of course be off, as for most scenarios you do indeed want to autostart.
I am curious as to what people think, and if this is worthy of being made as a wishlist item on bugs.kde.org.
adding a toggle to the Autostart settings page to pause/ignore all the entries (or even selected ones) is a good idea for a “wishlist” item.
i would add that there should also be the choice of a) ignoring them for only the next restart (enabled thereafter), or b) to permanently disable them until you go back and uncheck the box.
i might even further suggest that Autostart be available in the system tray (tho that may be going too far).
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as for the plasma login manager, my view is that this would be scope creep and adding unwanted complexity to something that is only supposed to securely get the system booted into your user acct.
the more features and hooks that are added to what is essentially a splash screen, makes it harder to maintain and increases it’s attack surface.
Yes that would be a great solution. I’d honestly be happy with just this.
It’s a rare enough thing to need to disable autostart applications that i don’t think it calls for a system tray menu (which already cluttered for many users).
Sure I see your point, and that may be the reason it doesn’t get implemented, but i still would really love to see this as a feature.
It could be kept really simple as in checking a box which then sets a boolean flag, and then the system behind autostart determines whether or not to run based on the flag. I don’t see any big security implications off the bat but I might be missing something of course.
if implemented this would actually be the primary way I use this whole feature. In most cases i probably wouldn’t remember to toggle it on in system settings when im say dual booting into windows and linux a couple times. so having the option be available on the login screen means i can still avoid the slow login times without needing the hindsight to toggle it in settings.
i would just write a bash script that runs on every boot that throws up yes/no dialog if you want your Autostart to run and if you choose yest then it renames the Autostart folder back into existence and restarts the plasmashell.
then the default is that Autostart does not run but you have an easy way to get back to it when you want to.
I didn’t completely understand what you meant, But from what I’m getting… I think the idea of “grouped autostart applications” would work amazingly for that situation, Right?
Have groups, Let the user disable some when they want to, And you can do what you want to do without a specific group auto-starting!
(Just to be clear, I’m not saying the feature exists, I’m suggesting this as a solution to that problem, And maybe make the experience easier in general.)
That’s a little more than what i was describing but yes this would also absolutely work. Just a way to toggle autostart on and off from the settings and/or login screen would be enough for me, but your idea could be a cool addition as well.
Thank you everyone for your suggestions, please leave a comment on the bugs.kde.org discussion if you have anything else to add, any feedback is welcome!