Support notification badge numbers on icons in Icons-Only Task Manager

Brainstorm
1

Currently, the Icons-Only Task Manager in KDE Plasma 6 does not consistently show notification badge numbers (e.g., unread messages, new notifications) on application icons. It would be highly useful to have support for badge overlays similar to those in macOS or GNOME, especially for communication apps like Telegram, WhatsApp (via browser), Discord, etc.

This feature would enhance usability and user awareness by showing relevant counts (unread messages, pending tasks) directly on pinned app icons, reducing the need to open each app to check manually.

If technically feasible, it would be great to support badge numbers via standard desktop notification APIs (like org.kde.StatusNotifierItem) or app-specific integrations.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Pin a supported app (e.g., Telegram or WhatsApp Web via browser) to the task manager.
  2. Receive a new message.
  3. Observe that the icon does not show a badge with the number of new messages.

Expected Behavior: The icon in the task manager should display a badge showing the number of unread or pending items.

1 Like
2

Hi - for what it’s worth, the details and comments on the following KDE Bugtracking System tickets might be helpful background on this topic :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Hello. Thank you for the topic links. I see that this is being treated more as a bug than a feature request. I hope our KDE developers will either develop their own approach or implement the GNOME-style solution and bring notification badges on icons to our beautiful KDE. Thanks again.

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