The On Screen Display in Plasma 5 is really annoying and much bigger than in KDE 4. Previously, the OSD in KDE 4 was located in the bottom of the screen and its height was quite low (like 30 px). So when any OSD action (volume change, screen brightness change etc.) occured, one was not distracted from its work, but still could read the information if wanted. Now the OSD appears almost in the middle of the screen as a 250x big square, totally distracting you from what you are doing. I still want the information it reads (so disabling OSD is not what I want), but I don't wan't it to cover my work for almost 2 seconds. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Trigger any OSD action (display brightness change, volume up/down/mute in kmix etc.) Actual Results: Big 250px square with OSD information appears above other windows, almost in the middle of the screen. Expected Results: OSD should be smaller, and/or placed elsewhere (on the bottom of the screen like in KDE 4 etc.)
Created attachment 92398 [details] Current size and distracting position of OSD
Changing this to a bug: this would really drive me mad. This is totally oversized, indeed. Since I don't use Plasma5 yet: is it possible at least to have the OSD somewhere else on the screen?
What's the screen resolution? Might it be a virtual machine?
@Martin It is like that for me - a normal desktop machine, no dpi setting forced. I thought it was intentional. :)
It's not entirely unintentional; it scales with font. If your base font size is big, OSD is big (the base height is computed as pixel height of "M" * some constant). That said, the OSD is part of the look-&-feel package, allowing for easy drop-in replacement of the visualized data. You can even change it yourself for immediate effect for the time being - open /usr/share/plasma/look-and-feel/org.kde.breeze.desktop/contents/osd/OsdItem.qml in your favorite editor - edit the "height" line at the top and replace 15 with 3 and completely comment out the PlasmaCore.IconItem { .. } lines. That will give you moreless the kde4 OSD. Note: untested. As for the actual size, could perhaps be made smaller, but it won't return to the kde4 style one. That's what l&f is for. Position will also not change, this is however not easily settable (from the OSD pov, impossible even, because it's placed by kwin directly).
Seriously, no way to place this elsewhere? That would be extremely annoying, then. That was the nice thing in the KDE4 OSD, one could place it elsewhere, actually in all corners, top and bottom middle as well. Also asking plain users to edit the settings is something a bit over the top, don't you think? We are supposed to be user friendly, and an intrusive and oversized OSD is not exactly that...
> That was the nice thing in the KDE4 OSD, one could place it elsewhere, actually in all corners, top and bottom middle as well. We never had that in KDE4, it was always hardcoded at the same position. See for example this code from kmix from KDE4: http://lxr.kde.org/source/kde/kdemultimedia/kmix/apps/kmix.cpp?v=stable-qt4#1178 Always hardcoded to the 4/5th of the screen height and middle of screen width. Never reads config files. > Also asking plain users to edit the settings is something a bit over the top, don't you think? I did not write this in any official nor personal guide or any blogpost targeted at plain users. I also did write "You can even change it yourself for immediate effect for the time being", ie. "if you find it really really that annoying, you can do this simple step to fix it in the meantime". That is how it's supposed to be read. It's the best help I can give at this point and therefore no, I don't think it's over the top. > We are supposed to be user friendly, and an intrusive and oversized OSD is not exactly that... As I said, that's what look&feel packages are for. It's very easy to change it there and it's very easy to change the look&feel that is used. Besides, at no place I said we're not going to fix it.
Interesting, I never checked this in the code an wrongly assumed OSD was provided by kdelibs in KDE4. The OSD we use in Amarok can be moved elsewhere on the screen, but that is something we made ourselves apparently, leaving the choice to the user to use the OSD or the notifications box. Anyway, sorry if I misunderstood your statement about the editing, and nice to hear this will be fixed :)
I can confirm this... I'd rather call it a bug. Maybe it's not so disturbing in a large screen. But I have a 12 inch screen with 1280 by 720 resolution and it's my only display. When watching a video, I need to pause first if I need to adjust the volume since the OSD blocks a major (and even the most important) part of the space. A friendly, large icon is nice when it doesn't interfere the normal workflow. OSD is for visualizing the data (volume, brightness etc.). The icon is relatively unimportant. So It's really appreciated that we can go back to the old-fasioned KDE 4 way. Personally, I think moving it to the bottom right corner is even better.
Created attachment 93647 [details] The disturbing OSD when watching a video.
Since it can be fixed by creating a Plasma theme without it it seems there is at least a short term solution. At the same time adding a new bit in System Settings seems frivolous and risk overcluttering, and since its not an ordinary widget it can't just use the "Alternatives" pop-up. On the other hand this is a good example of why a Plasma theme creator would be such a great thing.
Git commit 3956cac47d2a15184b0ecb4ca84049b2ab6b1870 by Martin Klapetek. Committed on 27/07/2015 at 11:57. Pushed by mklapetek into branch 'master'. [osd] Make the osd 1/6th of a screen at most FIXED-IN: 5.4.0 M +1 -1 lookandfeel/contents/osd/OsdItem.qml http://commits.kde.org/plasma-workspace/3956cac47d2a15184b0ecb4ca84049b2ab6b1870
Plasma 5.4 will bring much improved OSD, besides it getting smaller, the disappearing algorithm was also changed to be less "annoying".
(In reply to Martin Klapetek from comment #13) > Plasma 5.4 will bring much improved OSD, besides it getting smaller, the > disappearing algorithm was also changed to be less "annoying". Thank you, Martin. The new OSD is nice.