Bug 512722

Summary:	No obvious method to quickly disable animations
Product:	[Applications] systemsettings	Reporter:	Mingcong Bai <jeffbai>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	kde, nate
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability
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 12:43:52 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 Nate Graham 2025-12-11 17:47:51 UTC

The slider on System Settings' home page to disable animations is the expected method of disabling all animations globally.

> it didn't quite seem obvious that it meant "no animation
Why not? Can you articulate what exactly the problem is?

> it also disables any animated feedback for drag-and-drop on the Plasma Shell
I'm not sure what exactly this means. Can you clarify the problem you see when you turn off animations using the slider?

Comment 2 Mingcong Bai 2025-12-12 01:14:58 UTC

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> The slider on System Settings' home page to disable animations is the
> expected method of disabling all animations globally.
> 
> > it didn't quite seem obvious that it meant "no animation
> Why not? Can you articulate what exactly the problem is?

The issue is that "no animation" on the UI was actually presented as "instantaneous animations", which I failed to notice until a friend pointed it out to me. My suggestion is a more obvious switch to toggle animations on/off (but I understand that there may not be a lot of demand for this).

> > it also disables any animated feedback for drag-and-drop on the Plasma Shell
> I'm not sure what exactly this means. Can you clarify the problem you see
> when you turn off animations using the slider?

I means that application icons/tabs on the taskbar simply "jumps" to different locations as I drag them. When compositing was turned off on X11, they still have a sliding animation as I drag them.

Comment 3 Nate Graham 2025-12-12 20:16:23 UTC

(In reply to Mingcong Bai from comment #2)
> The issue is that "no animation" on the UI was actually presented as
> "instantaneous animations", which I failed to notice until a friend pointed
> it out to me. My suggestion is a more obvious switch to toggle animations
> on/off (but I understand that there may not be a lot of demand for this).
Perhaps we can change the label to say "no animations". Let's use the bug report to track that.

There being no easy method to disable shadows I'm afraid is intentional. The shadows are a part of the intended visual design.


> I means that application icons/tabs on the taskbar simply "jumps" to
> different locations as I drag them. When compositing was turned off on X11,
> they still have a sliding animation as I drag them.
Got it. I can confirm that. It's definitely an unintentional side effect of disabling animations, and probably easily fixable.

Can you open a new bug report for it, and link it in the "See also" field of this bug report? Thanks!