Bug 515711

Summary:	Launch applications on the virtual desktop where the launch was initiated
Product:	[Plasma] kwin	Reporter:	Abdul Aziz <abdulazizbdofficial>
Component:	general	Assignee:	KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	akselmo, gabravier, kde, kdedev, m.kurz, mrmazda, postix, xaver.hugl
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability
Version First Reported In:	6.5.5
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	KDE Linux
OS:	Linux
See Also:	https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15329
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Abdul Aziz 2026-02-08 06:40:05 UTC

I have a very keyboard-centric workflow, so I make heavy use of virtual desktops and keyboard shortcuts to open applications.

There is a behavior that is a bit annoying: let’s say I am on Desktop 1 and I run a keyboard shortcut to open an app, and then quickly switch to a different desktop (which I do quite often). The app appears on the desktop I am currently on, not the one where I initially launched it.

This is very annoying and inconsistent with my workflow. It would be a real quality-of-life improvement if applications opened on the virtual desktop where they were initialized.

Comment 1 Akseli Lahtinen 2026-02-09 09:38:31 UTC

Can confirm this happens.

Operating System: KDE Linux 2026-02-09
KDE Plasma Version: 6.6.80
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.24.0
Qt Version: 6.10.2
Kernel Version: 6.18.7-zen1-1-zen (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15.5 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6600

Comment 2 TraceyC 2026-02-09 17:44:18 UTC

I've been caught out by this also and agree this would be an improvement. I'll forward it along to the maintainers for consideration.

Comment 3 Zamundaaa 2026-02-09 20:47:02 UTC

This was sort of planned for a while, and should be quite doable now I think. When creating an activation token, we could add some metadata to it (output uuid, virtual desktop uuid) and that can then be taken into account when activating the window.

For Wayland windows, it should then work as expected in the majority of cases. For X11 windows, window activation works very differently, but https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/8457 should make it relatively easy to use similar code paths as for Wayland apps.