Bug 434637

Summary:	Another way to switch activities
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	frederic.parrenin <frederic.parrenin>
Component:	Activity Switcher sidebar	Assignee:	Ivan Čukić <ivan.cukic>
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE
Severity:	normal	CC:	nate, plasma-bugs
Priority:	NOR
Version:	5.20.5
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	screenshot of the activity switcher

Description frederic.parrenin@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr 2021-03-19 20:26:43 UTC

I am using Plasma 5.20.5 on Debian testing (bullseye).
I am back on KDE after using Gnome for >16 years.
There are many aspects I like in KDE and I am generally very happy with the switch.
One aspect I am still not comfortable with is the activity switcher.
In my opinion, it uses a too large space with completely hide the left part of the screen. 
The windows previews are not necessary since the windows get the focus when you switch, so this is redundant.
The icons are also redundant with the icons in the task bar.
My proposition would therefore be to just have a red square in the task bar surrounding the icon of the currently selected app when using alt-tab.

Comment 1 Ivan Čukić 2021-03-19 20:30:25 UTC

Can you post a screenshot?

Activity switcher does not show window previews.

Comment 2 frederic.parrenin@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr 2021-03-19 20:36:21 UTC

Created attachment 136857 [details]
screenshot of the activity switcher

I meant this panel on the left of the screen to switch windows and opened with alt-tab.
Is that not called the "activity switcher"?

Comment 3 Ivan Čukić 2021-03-19 20:47:54 UTC

No :) I guess the confusion is that Gnome took the term 'activities' and used it for something else to Plasma so people coming from Gnome have a bit of a hard time.

The Alt-Tab thing is 'task switcher' and is configurable - just go to System Settings -> Window Management -> Task Switcher and test out different visualisations.

New ones can be downloaded via 'Get New Task Switchers', though those are not /that/ different to those stock ones.

Comment 4 frederic.parrenin@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr 2021-03-19 21:03:08 UTC

Thank you for the tip.
I found MediumDefault to be more comfortable for me.
I am not sure the Breeze one is a good default one.
However, I have not found a task switcher which uses the task bar in the bottom panel to emphasize the icon of the current app.
Maybe that would be an idea to explore further for the task switcher.

Comment 5 Nate Graham 2021-03-21 00:55:01 UTC

I am also not sure that Breeze ids a good default task switcher. That's why we are planning to change it in the Plasma 5.22 timeframe. See https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/merge_requests/510/

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 433034 ***