Bug 511922

Summary: No window previews when "Hide other windows when hovering over previews" is turned off
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: zupnikszydlik
Component: generalAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: normal CC: cwo.kde, ivan.cukic, kde, nicolas.fella
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 6.5.2   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Manjaro   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description zupnikszydlik 2025-11-10 15:45:28 UTC
SUMMARY
In Plasma, window previews fail to appear when the option "Hide other windows when hovering over previews" is disabled in the Icons-Only Task Manager settings. When the option is enabled, previews display correctly (with other windows hidden), but disabling it results in no preview at all.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Open Configure Icons-Only Task Manager
2. Disable the setting "Hide other windows when hovering over previews"
3. Hover the mouse over a task's window preview

OBSERVED RESULT
No window preview is shown

EXPECTED RESULT
Window preview should be shown, regardless of whether other windows are hidden


SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Manjaro Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.19.0
Qt Version: 6.10.0
Kernel Version: 6.12.57-1-MANJARO (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor
Memory: 16 GB of RAM (15.5 GB usable)
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
Comment 1 cwo 2025-11-12 16:12:31 UTC
Do you mean that the window thumbnail is not shown at all, or that the thumbnail is shown, but when hovering over it the full window is not shown?

The first would be a bug (but I can't reproduce that), and the second I'm fairly certain is intentional behavior - it's how the kwin effect it uses works..
Comment 2 zupnikszydlik 2025-11-13 02:59:37 UTC
(In reply to cwo from comment #1)
> Do you mean that the window thumbnail is not shown at all, or that the
> thumbnail is shown, but when hovering over it the full window is not shown?
> 
> The first would be a bug (but I can't reproduce that), and the second I'm
> fairly certain is intentional behavior - it's how the kwin effect it uses
> works..

The second scenario.

I thought it was a bug because I expected the window to show on top regardless of other windows. Perhaps the naming of the options was somewhat misleading, as they sounded exactly like that (especially with "Hide other windows when hovering over previews" — this looks like an additional setting to "Show small window previews when hovering over tasks").

Thanks for the clarification and for taking the time to look into this.
Comment 3 cwo 2025-11-13 09:01:30 UTC
Thanks for reporting back!

The two settings you're mentioning are somewhat related (though not dependent on each other, if the previews are disabled you can hover over the tooltip instead, which should be made more explicit in the text). But the previews it's talking about are the small ones in the tooltip, if you disable the "Show small window previews" setting you'll just get a tooltip with no image, just the application/window title(s), and if applicable, virtual desktop and media/volume controls for that window.

You're right that the label is not maximally clear about this. The problem is that the label is already rather long, and making the description even longer could cause trouble in other languages where text is even wider. So finding something that is more precise and not completely unwieldy is somewhat tricky.

There's a bunch more things in this configuration dialog that could certainly be improved.