Bug 512711

Summary: No obvious method to quickly disable animations and shadows, etc.
Product: [Plasma] kwin Reporter: Mingcong Bai <jeffbai>
Component: compositingAssignee: KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: normal CC: xaver.hugl
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 6.5.3   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Mingcong Bai 2025-11-28 08:46:18 UTC
SUMMARY

With Plasma on Wayland, there is no key combination to quickly disable "desktop composition" (now that there is no such thing as no-composite Wayland desktop), but it makes it quite difficult for me to tolerate the desktop, as I feel dizzy from animation.

After fumbling through System Settings, I found two ways to disable animations:

1. Slide the "global animation speed" to "instant", it disables everything instantly, but... (a) it didn't quite seem obvious that it meant "no animation" and (b) it also disables any animated feedback for drag-and-drop on the Plasma Shell, e.g., the taskbar, making dragging and rearranging un-intuitive.

2. Disable all animations one by one in the drop-down below, but... it does not disable all animations, e.g. panel sliding and especially fade-in/out in whilst Alt-Tabbing, this is especially nauseating for me.

Another minor thing (though on a tangent) is that disabling animation is no longer linked to having compositing effects any more - this is more of a habit issue and I can disable them individually elsewhere, but it just seemed like an extra step to me. This is nowhere near severe an issue as the ones noted above, though.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

Log into Plasma on Wayland.

OBSERVED RESULT

There should be a quick way to disable desktop effects like before (Shift-Alt-F12) and an option to disable (or not enable) animation on each login (as before).

EXPECTED RESULT

Such options no longer exists and UI seems confusing.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS

Operating System: AOSC OS 12.999.0
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.20.0
Qt Version: 6.10.0
Kernel Version: 6.17.7-aosc-main (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 14 × Intel® Core™ Ultra 5 225H
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (30.2 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: Intel® Graphics

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

N/A
Comment 1 Zamundaaa 2025-11-28 12:13:50 UTC
No such option will be added. If turning off animations make some actions in plasmashell unintuitive, please report that to plasmashell so that it can be fixed.
Comment 2 Mingcong Bai 2025-11-28 12:42:08 UTC
(In reply to Zamundaaa from comment #1)
> No such option will be added. If turning off animations make some actions in
> plasmashell unintuitive, please report that to plasmashell so that it can be
> fixed.

Okay, will report there.