Bug 488722

SUMMARY

With the Thumbnail Grid and Sidebar switchers, when the user clicks them with the mouse, the window is immediately raised and the switcher closes.

With the Large Icons, Flip Switch, and Cover Switch switchers, when an entry is clicked, the clicked window is highlighted in the switcher, but the switcher remains open until the user confirms this with a second click. This makes sense, as multiple windows of the same application can't be distinguished at all (for Large Icons), or not all windows are easily accessible so the user may need to click a different window first to access the one they want to raise (for Flip/Cover Switch).

The Compact switcher behaves like the second group, but there seems to be no reason - All windows are immediately displayed, and the window title is clearly visible. Clicking a list entry should immediately raise the corresponding window and close the switcher, like the Thumbnail Grid and Sidebar switchers do.

This is largely not an issue if the switcher is accessed through Alt-Tab, as releasing the Alt key will function like the second click. It is inconvenient if the switcher is accessed through binding a corner to "Show Switcher" in the Screen Edges kcm.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Bind a screen corner to "Toggle Window Switching", open several windows, then move the pointer to the corner that was bound to the switcher.
2. In the list that appears, left-click one of the windows.

OBSERVED RESULT

The entry in the list is highlighted (and, if the "Show selected window" option in the Switcher kcm is enabled, the corresponing window is raised), but the switcher remains open and a click anywhere outside the switcher will cancel the whole action, returning focus to the window that originally had it before activating the switcher..
 

EXPECTED RESULT

The window corresponding to the selected task is raised and the switcher is closed, allowing the user to continue their task with that window. 

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS

Current Neon with Plasma 6.2 Dev; but from my light testing, Plasma 2.27.11 in Kubuntu 24.04 has the same behavior. 

KDE Plasma Version:  6.1.80
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.4.0
Qt Version: 6.7.0

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

One argument against this change would be that it would not allow disambiguation of windows that have the same title (e.g. several terminals). But any disambiguation only works if "Show selected window" is active, so if that is disabled, it seems this is an extra meaningless click. (And the disambiguation would also be required in the Thumbnail Grid and Sidebar switchers, as the thumbnail is likely too small to distinguish e.g. the contents of several Konsole windows in the same directory.