Bug 499716

Summary: When multiple windows of the same app are stacked and the windows preview/peeker list is shown; pre-scroll to the most focused windows
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: Fernando Marcelino Muniz <fernandommuniz>
Component: Task Manager and Icons-Only Task Manager widgetsAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: wishlist CC: cwo.kde, nate, qydwhotmail
Priority: NOR Keywords: usability
Version First Reported In: 6.2.5   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Arch Linux   
OS: Linux   
URL: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/merge_requests/2839
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In: 6.6.0
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Fernando Marcelino Muniz 2025-02-09 09:18:22 UTC
For example: If you have 30 images open, and you're looking at the 19th (or that's in front of all the others); the window preview/peeker list when opened would "pre-scroll" to the 19th image, preferably showing it at the center of the list.
Comment 1 Fernando Marcelino Muniz 2025-02-09 09:22:19 UTC
This would be useful and convenient if you're looking at images/videos from different folders in sequence.
Comment 2 cwo 2025-02-18 17:24:00 UTC
This seems like an intuitively quite plausible idea, thanks! I assume you mean in the tooltip that shows the thumbnails, and by "most focused" you mean the one that is currently focused, not tracking some frequency of how often a user focused a particular window? 

On the other hand, one could argue that a) the first windows are likely the more important ones and b) the usefulness of the popup is highest if the currently active window is not among them, because switching to it doesn't do anything, so on smaller screens a good amount of the limited screen space for displaying the thumbnail list is wasted on a useless option.


Another thing to consider is that media player buttons will only show on the first window (unless we can relatively cleanly identify which particular window is doing the actual playing). So if a user has e.g. multiple browser windows open and there's a video playing in one of them, this would increase the chances that the media player controls are not on screen, reducing their usefulness somewhat. 

I'm still inclined to think it's probably worth it; if the user browses the list and selects one of them, it would make sense to me to start from approximately that position if the user hovers the icon again. Will need to see it in practice though, and maybe get feedback from users who use the thumbnail version (I have the thumbnails disabled myself).
Comment 3 Fernando Marcelino Muniz 2025-02-18 17:31:00 UTC
I used "most focused" because it's possible to have multiple windows maximized, while only the one in the front is interactable, that would be the "most focused window".

Admittedly, this is only useful if you're checking each window top-to-bottom, so this feature would work as a page marker.
Comment 4 Nate Graham 2025-02-18 21:47:35 UTC
JFYI the "efficiency" keyword refers to power efficiency, not personal workflow efficiency.
Comment 5 Bug Janitor Service 2025-02-19 22:42:05 UTC
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/merge_requests/2839
Comment 6 Fernando Marcelino Muniz 2025-10-24 12:02:14 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 7 Nate Graham 2025-10-24 14:05:26 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 8 cwo 2026-01-08 09:04:46 UTC
Git commit d0547bb59679882fbfa200a9f30bd46346a73ff2 by Christoph Wolk.
Committed on 08/01/2026 at 08:47.
Pushed by cwo into branch 'master'.

applets/taskmanager: scroll tooltip to active window

Currently, the tooltip shows the list of windows belonging to a grouped
task always starting at the first item. For some tasks involving many
windows the order is meaningful though, so it could be convenient to be
able to go to the previous/next window quickly. Similarly, if a user
scrolled to a window and selected it, then reconsidered, starting from
that window is likely more what the user expects, rather than having
to begin scrolling from the beginning again.

This change positions the ListView on showing the tooltip such that
if the grouped task contains the currently active window, it will be in
the visible range, and at the center if possible.

M  +10   -1    applets/taskmanager/qml/ToolTipDelegate.qml

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/commit/d0547bb59679882fbfa200a9f30bd46346a73ff2