Proposal: Split Plasma Panel into Independent Segments with Dynamic Backgrounds

[Al_Duccino]

I’d like to propose an enhancement to the KDE Plasma panel that builds on the existing floating panel behavior.

Currently, the panel behaves as a single continuous bar that can adapt (e.g., floating or auto-hiding) and integrates well with maximized windows. However, it always remains visually unified across its full width.

Proposed feature:

Add an option to logically and visually split the panel into three independent segments:

• Left: Application Launcher

• Center: Task Manager (running applications)

• Right: System Tray

Each segment would:

• Be positioned independently (left / center / right alignment on screen)

• Have its own background (instead of a full-width panel background)

• Only display a background behind active/visible elements

Behavior details:

• When no windows are maximized (desktop or minimized apps), the panel appears as three separate “islands” (similar to the floating panel style, but split).

• When a window is maximized, the panel could optionally behave like the current unified panel (or remain split, depending on a setting).

• Backgrounds should dynamically adapt, only appearing behind widgets rather than spanning empty space.

Optional enhancements:

• Support for floating-style borders (rounded corners, margins) per segment

• Ability to configure spacing between segments

• Smooth transitions between “split” and “unified” modes

Goal:

This would provide a cleaner, more modern look (similar to some tiling/Wayland compositors or macOS-style layouts), while keeping Plasma’s flexibility and customization.

[Jeff_Dooley]

You might be interested in the topic discussed here

Panel Colorizer for Plasma 6

Made this small but fully configurable plasmoid whose sole purpose is to inject/manage the background of other widgets in the same panel, the goal was to replicate the famous WM status bar look without actually making other widgets or modifying the panel itself. I think the result looks interesting for something that I figured out was possible just a couple days ago. This is the first release so it may have some unexpected bugs [Screenshot_20240219_040305] You can see it …

[skyfishgoo]

hi, welcome.

i don’t know of you know this is or not, but you can already have more than one panel along a screen edge, each with different settings and behaviors…. if that’s what you want.

just make three separate panels, sized and positioned how you want, and put the app launcher widget in one, the task manager widget in the center one, and the system tray widget in the other one.

or are you proposing this be the default desktop for new users?

[ngraham]

Yeah, you can already achieve this with either Panel Colorizer, or else by using three separate panels on the same screen edge.

[Al_Duccino]

What I mean is to have 3 split panels one the Desktop and while using none maximized windows/apps. But when you maximize an app/window those 3 split panels are replaced by a full with complete default panel.

[luisbocanegra]

Hi, Panel Colorizer maintainer here, do you mean something like this?

What’s happening here:

• Each panel has two presets, one where there is no panel background but widgets do have background + blur, the other does have panel background and a different color/shape for widgets
• Bottom panel uses another pair of presets, one that sets the panel to fit-content mode and other that sets it to fill mode
• To get the spacers to shrink in the bottom panel when in fit-content mode I had to add such feature to a fork of the built-in panel spacer GitHub - luisbocanegra/plasma-panel-spacer-extended: Spacer with Mouse gestures for the KDE Plasma Panel featuring Latte Dock/Gnome/Unity drag window gesture. Run any shortcut, command, application or URL/file with up to ten configurable mouse actions. · GitHub with the built-in spacer the panel won’t shrink
• Panel colorizer creates widget islands using another widget as separator, see Panel Colorizer for Plasma 6 - #52 by luisbocanegra for an explanation of how that’s done

It is not perfect but it gets the job done

[Al_Duccino]

I created a bash to use a kwin script (with claude, because i don’t know how to do it myself) to accomplish what I wanted. (It seems i can’t share the link to the github repository here)

The only issue I have is related to hidden panels, it’s seems there is no way to disable mouse over on panels. It would be nice if we could do it.

[Al_Duccino]

@luisbocanegra

Each panel has two presets, one where there is no panel background but widgets do have background + blur, the other does have panel background and a different color/shape for widgets

Can I ask what presets you used ? Thanks in advance.