Bug 488142

Summary:	Metabug: Handling not enough space for widgets
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	m1vri31c
Component:	Panel	Assignee:	Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	task	CC:	4wy78uwh, nate, niccolo.venerandi
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability
Version First Reported In:	6.0.5
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	NixOS
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:	https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/commit/d0701c19d91c963b5cc1574863961faf07a61765	Version Fixed In:	6.5.0
Sentry Crash Report:
Bug Depends on:	447603, 457536
Bug Blocks:

Description m1vri31c 2024-06-07 06:24:21 UTC

SUMMARY
The space available in a panel can change for a number of reasons, from rotating the display, changing the resolution or scaling, or other widgets changing in size. There currently does not seem to be many options for dealing with this, with widgets being randomly hidden or breaking if they run out of space.

The easiest fix to this would be to allow you to set which widgets or spacers you'd like to hide in the event of running out of space (I wonder if it's possible to do this for the Global Menubar since for it to work effectively it should appear on the relevant windows if it is hidden – but if it is a problem the user can choose to have it be hidden last). Beyond this it would be good to set spacing settings in widget configurations to be large (or whatever maximum size you chose) but shrink when there is not enough space. Further, widgets could change layout entirely based on size available, or desktops could even be set up per resolution rather than per display (e.g. you could make a portrait orientation panel layout and a landscape orientation one).

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Populate a panel with widgets
2. Change the display resolution or scaling to reduce the amount of room available

OBSERVED RESULT
Will be different per widget. Some break, some disappear altogether

EXPECTED RESULT
Shrink the size of widgets as much as is usable, and hide least important widgets first. Or allow the desktop layout to change entirely when the screen shape/size changes.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
NixOS 24.11 (unstable channel)
KDE Plasma Version: 6.0.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.2.0
Qt Version: 6.7.1

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2024-06-07 16:05:40 UTC

Perhaps we could move widgets into an overflow menu, and widgets could register themselves as important and try to avoid getting overflow-menu'd if possible.

Comment 2 Bug Janitor Service 2025-07-24 10:41:50 UTC

A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/merge_requests/3118

Comment 3 Nate Graham 2025-08-22 13:02:20 UTC

Both child bug reports are fixed; closing the metabug!

Comment 4 Niccolò Venerandi 2025-08-23 21:39:08 UTC

Git commit d0701c19d91c963b5cc1574863961faf07a61765 by Niccolò Venerandi.
Committed on 22/08/2025 at 07:05.
Pushed by niccolove into branch 'master'.

Make panel scrollable when overflowing

When there are more widgets and available space on the panel, the panel will become scrollable!

This also fixes the minimum size of the task manager so that icons can always preserve their full size.
Related: bug 457536, bug 447603
FIXED-IN: 6.5.0

M  +9    -3    applets/taskmanager/package/contents/ui/code/layoutmetrics.js
M  +28   -11   containments/panel/ConfigOverlay.qml
M  +101  -34   containments/panel/main.qml

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/commit/d0701c19d91c963b5cc1574863961faf07a61765