| Summary: | Option to hide or exclude unused activities from cycling and "Move to Activity" menu | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | [Plasma] plasmashell | Reporter: | serhumanos <diminombre> |
| Component: | Activities in general | Assignee: | Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null> |
| Status: | CONFIRMED --- | ||
| Severity: | wishlist | CC: | aldo-public, hohenegger, ivan.cukic, kdedev, wheniwasatruestar |
| Priority: | NOR | ||
| Version First Reported In: | 6.5.0 | ||
| Target Milestone: | 1.0 | ||
| Platform: | Other | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Latest Commit: | Version Fixed/Implemented In: | ||
| Sentry Crash Report: | |||
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Description
serhumanos
2025-11-03 15:52:47 UTC
Seconding this. I do not really care whether the activity is actually stopped by the stop button (since it seems like it was not working, according to bug #511058), since when I stop an activity it is usually a long term thing (months). What matters to me is that only the small set of active activities (for current semester) are the only ones that I cycle through or are shown in the activity manager. Now my activity manager is just so HUGE in the panel that contains it... Maybe just put the button "Stop" back, but call it "Hide" or "Disable" instead? The use case presented by Aldoo on the scale of months also applies to me, where labelled activities are representative applications saved in the launcher which were used for specific intents, which was why I filed #511354. Meta+Tab cycling now is alot more fraught than necessary. I understand that the term Stop is not as representative as the word Hide, but it did exactly as I needed. Changing to wishlist, since this is a feature request. This may be more complex than it seems on the surface, I'll let the developers weigh in on this. I absolutely support this "wish". Being one of the long-term KDE users who have refrained from using activities for long, I once learned to embrace them. I tried to live with the removal of the Stop button for some time now, but indeed it clutters my activity switcher with around 30 activities I have for different projects. In addition the Window actions menu "Show in Activities" has the same issue making it close to unusable. Looking at the announcements of the "Stop" removal and the overall discussion around Activities, I understand that maintenance reasons may require streamlining, but removing the "Stop" feature because essentially Snaps break it - I do not follow that (Look at how many are avoiding Snaps). Also the argument that it is not obvious what to do with applications open in multiple activities ... you just have to make a choice ... The stoppable (non Snap) applications associated with an activity now have to be stopped by hand when I pause working on the respective project. I have been a heavy user of suspendable activities, many who are used to project work will have been, and I support bringing it back. Fixing the newly-introduced cluttering of the activity lists is in fact a usability bug rather than a "wish" from the perspective of someone who actually knows activities. Hi everyone, Do you know of any tool or software similar to Activities, but that works like the old Activities behavior? The current version feels very uncomfortable for me and disrupts my workflow. Thank you very much! Not aware of any alternative Software, except (and that is my workaround for now) reverting to an older version of KDE. E.g., Kubuntu 25.10 still gets updates and does not break Activities unless the backports ppa is installed. The dbus interface of Activities had commands to start/stop Activities etc. If the main argument against the start/stop capability is that it confuses users, it would have been a compromise to keep the functionality and the dbus interface, which would allow extensions/plasmoids to expose it for power users. I can only guess that the functionality and the dbus interface has disappeared or will disappear as well (like activities altogether longterm, because what is the difference to virtual desktops now). (In reply to Andreas from comment #6) > Not aware of any alternative Software, except (and that is my workaround for > now) reverting to an older version of KDE. E.g., Kubuntu 25.10 still gets > updates and does not break Activities unless the backports ppa is installed. > > The dbus interface of Activities had commands to start/stop Activities etc. > > If the main argument against the start/stop capability is that it confuses > users, it would have been a compromise to keep the functionality and the > dbus interface, which would allow extensions/plasmoids to expose it for > power users. > > I can only guess that the functionality and the dbus interface has > disappeared or will disappear as well (like activities altogether longterm, > because what is the difference to virtual desktops now). Thank you very much for your response I understand what you're saying. Regarding the difference between virtual desktops and activities, for me it's precisely that I can hide/stop an activity and later resume it. Each activity also has its own widgets, wallpaper, panels, and task manager with apps pinned specifically for that activity. Being able to switch between them while seeing their distinct background wallpapers also helped me stay organized. If all of the above can be done with virtual desktops, then I wouldn't have any problem switching to them. thanks again |