Per-window scaling

Brainstorm
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The idea is to be able to control the scaling per-app alongside a global scale for each monitor. This will come in addition to all the other scaling controls. I feel like this would be a really cool feature to have, particularly for hi-dpi users on laptops

  • On a high DPI screen, if you reduce the scale of apps, you get more screen real-estate per app at the expense of legibility… but sometimes legibility is not very important (for example with note taking app), so you can scale those down and make more room for other apps. This is my main argument for this feature.
  • Some apps just have too big of a UI, or too small, and making them smaller or bigger would allow you to make better use of them, or to match their UIs with others.
  • Currently many apps allow you to zoom in and out (especially electron based app) and many dont. This idea would make all apps allow you to zoom in and out effectively.

I feel like this idea is best implemented on Wayland, since Plasma acts as the compositor so it would have control of the scaling better, and plasma on Wayland can already scale apps very well on different monitors.

To control the scaling, one can right click on the app’s title bar or task manager entry, and it’ll be under “More Actions”

If implemented, it would certainly be a very unique feature (among many offered by Plasma), and I don’t think any desktop environment or OS has it currently.

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Well you can already do it with kde/qt applications.

For instance:

QT_SCALE_FACTOR=2.2 dolphin

3 Likes
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Interesting, was not aware this is possible. Will keep it in mind :slight_smile:

However, this has the limitation that one can only control it while starting the app, not while the app is running. I’m proposing that this is adjustable while the app is running.

Also, this only works for KDE/Qt specifically. In my proposal, it would work for any app that supports scaling in general.

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It could be done in Wayland, but this is such a fringe use-case.

Feel free to open a feature request (bugs.kde.org), but my guess is it will get low interest.

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I understand what you mean that it’s a fringe use-case, and you’re right. Most people wouldn’t use it. One can say the same about other features like shading/unshading, per-window trasparency, etc. I feel like it’s a feature that one wouldn’t know would be useful until you actually have it and if it compliments the work you do. Many features in plasma are like that, and that’s why I like it so much.

I’d like to see more discussion here, and seeing what people think of it (advocacy, criticism, etc.), before opening a feature request.

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Now that I think about might not be that strange.
On a huge screens having a blown up terminal when having a normal dolphin for instance.

This isn’t exactly simple to implement, and the KWin devs have generally plenty on their plate but that could be achieved.

Still I would want to see more people seeing themselves using this feature to argue for it.
wouldn’t personally.

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