Allow to change notification font size and color in configuration file. https://imgur.com/vSjPRJ6 Another example: when I unpack zip file. Text is small and in default color with notification: “unpacking files” and after that “unpacking files finished”. I want to change font size and color of both this texts. There is old thread on KDE forum but it refers to old notifications version https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=156011&sid=e8fd8e8c2e28e6febe2ecb373df508d9 Following this thread only changes one line of text.
Why? The font is the same as everywhere else, the heading even slightly larger than normal text.
Believe me I would not bother you if it was purely for beauty purpose, for example to match system theme, but it is not. I guess it uses system font settings. My default font is not 9 but 12. For some system components it is good, but for notifications I barely notice it. And there are different notifications. When I unpack a file I usually wait for it and expect it, but when I use timer set to notify me in half an hour and I am busy doing other stuff, clicking from one application to another it is easy for me to miss a notification. I need big orange font to even notice that there is any notification. Now, I am able only to change this element (the same as in previous version of notifications): https://i.imgur.com/GIZFpWq.gif But this change doesn't cover these two lines: https://i.imgur.com/vSjPRJ6.png
I don't understand. Are you saying that your system font is 12 pt, but your notifications are still too small and you don't notice them?
When I multitask and jump from application to application and notifications are not distinct enough from the background it happens that I don't notice them. https://i.imgur.com/ZJx5gY6.png Big colorful, text as in example gif, captures my attention. But I want to be able to customize it to my liking and my needs and change the lines that now are not possible to change. The topic I linked earlier has 745 vies. Not very much but enough to indicate that some users are interested in such customization. By the way, this topic also indicates that users have different use-cases: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=161698 Sometimes notification is not very important and only confirms a job, sometimes is the most important, more important than current user activity.
Let's shift the conversation from requesting a specific solution (customize the font, style, color, etc of notifications) to an investigation of the problem, which is that notifications don't catch your attention enough. Which notifications are you finding that you're missing? Are they ones that disappear after a few seconds, or the ones that stay there until dismissed? Which apps are the ones those notifications you care about most? Etc.
The ones that disappear after a few seconds. But the problem is that I need to see them once they appear so keeping them half an hour is not the solution. I frequently use timer widget I must react as notification appears. To do that they must be well visible for me. Why are you reluctant to add some code in configuration to allow users change font? Was this decision to abandon per widget font configuration during shift from Plasma 4 to Plasma 5 was ever discussed in a broader KDE team circle? On Randa meetings or at least on plasma developer's mailing list? Was it forced by some QT constrains. I wonder what was the justification of such practice that limits user's choice.
>Why are you reluctant to add some code in configuration to allow users change font? Because that doesn't fix any underlying problem if one exists. It hides it for one user and only after they've been super bothered by it.
Sorry, but I don't understand this approach. > Because that doesn't fix any underlying problem What would be as you call it "underlying problem"? There is a problem for me and I stated it clearly. > if one exists Yes, I herby declare that there is one for me. And I stated it clearly. I want to have my notifications to have bigger font and different color to differentiate from background. If you don't want to do it then say it openly. But don't make "the only right user experience" philosophy because there isn't such thing. When I write what I want I am perfectly conscious what I want. You are trying to tell me that I don't need it. As you can see on this screenshot https://i.imgur.com/tdL9cmH.png font size and color makes a difference. Why did you left this settings? If you are trying to convince me that it doesn't make any difference and that there is a different kind of a problem (if there is any) why don't you remove this setting? I interpret your words as if you were trying to tell me that I don't need different font but I only need to pay more attention. If that interpretation of your words is correct, then this is absurd to me.
"I want to change the font, size, and color" is not the underlying problem. It is the proposed solution. The underlying problem is that you are having difficulty noticing notifications, right? We've found that bug discussions proceed more smoothly when we begin by defining the problem itself rather than immediately going to the proposed solution. Are you willing to discuss the problem that you are having difficulty noticing notifications?
> The underlying problem is that you are having difficulty noticing notifications, right? Right. That's obvious from what I have written so far. But if my solution to my problem doesn't suit you what is your solution proposal?
I also find it hard to notice notifications using the default Breeze plasma theme. Part of the problem is that the plasma theme inherits its colors from the system color scheme, so everything sort of blends together. This is worsened by having a large, high-res monitor (mine is 1440p) which causes notifications in the default location of a default panel to show up in the far periphery of one's vision, hence easily going unnoticed. For me, what would help is customization of the color scheme for the notification. If I am using a light color scheme like Breeze, then having notifications theme according to the Breeze Dark plasma theme makes a huge difference in noticing them because of the contrast. I could of course set my plasma theme to Breeze Dark but I prefer all other plasma elements (panel, widgets, etc.) using my system color scheme.
Created attachment 124351 [details] Popup Notification Example
I have a 38" widescreen monitor. The out of the box popups are way too small to catch my attention. I had to manually edit the .qml files to give me something useful. See attached image of my current desktop w/ a popup example. Would be great if we could configure this with the GUI.
Agree for this bug. I have KDE Connect and receiving for example SMS notifications which include some one-time password. My eye sight is not 100%, and when I'm rushing to read the SMS content to copy the one-time-passcode, it's pretty difficult. It would help if I could make those pop-ups a one or two font size bigger.
I just switched to KDE/Plasma and its great. However I am unable to read the text of notifications because it is too small. Without being able to change the font size notifications are totally unusable for me.
The text in notifications is the same size as text used throughout Plasma. If it's too small to read in notifications, it should be too small to read elsewhere, in which case the solution is to increase the font size globally. :) Being able to change the font size of just notifications doesn't make sense and wouldn't really resolve the issue that people have brought up of notifications not being noticeable enough with large screens or huge areas of light colored windows. Let's use this bug report to track that issue explicitly.
> The text in notifications is the same size as text used throughout Plasma. If it's too small to read in notifications, it should be too small to read elsewhere, in which case the solution is to increase the font size globally. :) That is totally wrong argument because it doesn't take into account that users have different approaches and different use-cases of notifications. Notifications are not only confirmation that the job was done but also notify that something must be done, sometimes immediately. The fact that someone is able to read the small size text doesn't mean that user wants to have the same text size on notifications (or across the whole Plasma). The function of notification is to draw user's attention, that is why I want to have bigger text than I use in other elements of Plasma. I would be very happy if you could do something about it before Plasma 6.
> The function of notification is to draw user's attention > ... > but also notify that something must be done, sometimes immediately. Actually that's not really true--or at least, it's not supposed to be true. Notifications are generally intended to be ignorable. If you miss a notification, nothing bad should happen--or else it wasn't appropriate to communicate that information to the user using notifications. The only exception is critical notifications, which we make "sticky" on the screen, only disappearing after you close them manually. This way we can be sure the notification has gotten your attention. Can you maybe provide examples of the kind of notifications you're talking about where you find yourself missing them with negative consequences?
> Notifications are generally intended to be ignorable. The whole point is that there are different type of notifications. For example I use Timer widget. Otherwise I would have to use my phone. Unfortunately Kalarm requires the whole kdepim-runtime and akonadi, so I don't want to install it on my slow PC. Also when I use spotify I like to see notification that the song is changing. May seem trivial but I like it that way.
for my case, I have KDE Connect and receiving for example SMS notifications which include some one-time password. My eye sight is not 100%, and when I'm rushing to read the SMS content to copy the one-time-passcode, it's pretty difficult. It would help if I could make those pop-ups a one or two font size bigger.
(In reply to apache from comment #19) > For example I use Timer widget. Otherwise I would have to use my phone. > Unfortunately Kalarm requires the whole kdepim-runtime and akonadi, so I > don't want to install it on my slow PC. So the timer widget sends a notification that disappears before you see it? Sounds like that's a bug in the timer using the wrong kind of notification. You definitely need to know when the timer finishes; that's the whole point. So the notification should not disappear. > Also when I use spotify I like to see notification that the song is > changing. May seem trivial but I like it that way. These are "ignorable" notifications where nothing bad happens if you miss them. > for my case, I have KDE Connect and receiving for example SMS notifications > which include some one-time password. My eye sight is not 100%, and when > I'm rushing to read the SMS content to copy the one-time-passcode, it's > pretty difficult. It would help if I could make those pop-ups a one or two > font size bigger. This is a borderline case where the notifications are technically ignorable, but if you miss the notification for an SMS that contains the code you were waiting for it's annoying. Nothing bad happens, but you get annoyed and have to do some extra work. FWIW when your mouse cursor is within the area of the notification (for example when you're going to select the text in the code) the timer stops. So you only need to notice the notification within the default 5-second period. And we also let you increase the number of seconds that auto-disappearing notifications are on screen for too.
This discussion doesn't make any sense. You claim that the key factor is whether something bad happens if I miss a notification or not. It is not about that. It is about how users (not developers) want to use their desktop environment. You do Plasma for yourself or for users? What is the point of changing default Plasma wallpaper? Anything bad would happen if it stayed the same for years. No. But some people still think it is better to customize. Anything bad would happen if everyone would have to use default theme? No. But still users want to customize. Either someone do it or Cloze it because waiting a year only to continue such discussion is absurd.
I think it would be a welcome addition if notifications had a configurable "accessibility" option to make them somehow stand out more, especially for people with a lot of screen real estate. But I agree that adding an option to increase the font size doesn't make much sense since notifications simply inherit the font size used throughout the interface. Some ideas: 1. Use a different animation for incoming notifications since the current fade-in effect doesn't catch the eye very much 2. Add an option to customize the color scheme/style of notifications. Many applications, such as kdenlive, allow changing the color scheme on a per-application basis, so this would make sense If you're missing notifications: a. change where they show-up. I have them centered which helped. b. have the ones you want show up in history. If you miss them, just open the history c. increase the time-out for auto-dismissing notifications
> But I agree that adding an option to increase the font size doesn't make much sense since notifications simply inherit the font size used throughout the interface. It also doesn't make any sense to change wallpaper. Gosh. It is not about sense. It is about preference.
Letting the user make changes to something purely aesthetic like the wallpaper or Plasma theme is a different matter from letting the user customize something to work around a usability problem. Asking the user to solve deficiencies in our own design isn't very nice. :) Where possible, we prefer to solve the usability problem at a deeper level so that customization isn't required. If all those options become exhausted, then we can look into making it customizable. So far people are articulating that they are having difficulty noticing notifications which time out, particularly on large screens. That's a legitimate issue. I'm proposing that we first brainstorm solutions to that issue. Making the "appear" animation more visible is one such idea. Increasing the default timeout is another, though I'm not sure that would be so effective if the root problem is notifications not being noticed at all. Making the default appearance somehow stand out more in the first place is another idea. And so on. I'd prefer if we stay on that track for a while. Who knows, maybe we'll come up with something that works for everyone. :)
Taking into account usability, we have: time factor, look factor, importance of notification factor (which appeared to be subjective / personally biased). I don't know how many unstated here factors you want to take into account to make usability issue clear and proceed to the next step. You may suggest some if they wasn't stated here. I admit that I am not familiar with desktop usability studies. So some insight maybe useful for all taking part in this conversation. > So far people are articulating that they are having difficulty noticing notifications which time out, particularly on large screens. That's a legitimate issue. I'm proposing that we first brainstorm solutions to that issue. What is the difference between large screen and small screen considering usability of notifications? > I'm not sure that would be so effective if the root problem is notifications not being noticed at all. That crosses out timeout and allow to proceed to the next factor: how to make them more noticeable. You can change font color, background color and font size or even type of notification and their behavior. You can make it more complex and as some articles that you can google by: notification+usability suggest provide different types of notifications: High-attention, Medium-attention, Low-attention. And they can be also characterized by other factors like from what application notification comes from and what it actually notify about. For example: https://uxdesign.cc/a-comprehensive-guide-to-notification-design-2fff67f08b7a But this is the whole new level of complication for this issue and more complex than just allowing to change font size and color. And I am sure whatever you hardcode there will be some users that still want more customization.
> What is the difference between large screen and small screen considering > usability of notifications? Holding DPI constant, notifications will take up less space on a larger screen than a smaller one, because they do not scale with screen size. So that presents one avenue: have notifications scale with screen size. (i.e. effective resolution, taking into account DPI). > You can change font color, background color and font size or even type of > notification and their behavior. Perhaps we could color the header area in some way? For example notifications marked with Urgency=Critical could color the header red. And other notifications could have a light blue header. I wouldn't be averse to playing with the entrance animation too.
I really like the idea of changing the notification animation (potentially both appear/disappear). E.g., I'm not suggesting stealing pantheon's animation, but it does catch one's attention and looks very nice at the same time. Changing the color of the header for important notifications is also a good idea. However, this doesn't address the problem of missing non-important notifications. I would *not* scale notifications with screen size. It would probably look ridiculous under many circumstances.
> Perhaps we could color the header area in some way? For example notifications marked with Urgency=Critical could color the header red. Why not, but what criteria will be used to decide what is "Critical"? Only system notification, like for example: you are running out of space or it is going to be customizable? Because for me Timer notifications are critical. For other users email they are waiting for may be critical. This would require to add some notifications settings like in Mac or Windows. They have quite complex notification center: How To Get the Most From the Notification Center https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2mZF4Hs7Fg Windows 10 Settings System Notification and actions what does it do and how to set up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGwym4J8usY
Why not allowing custom css in configuration file to make it pretty and fun https://tobiasahlin.com/moving-letters/ That would be awesome.
I read this https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Notifications They propose: "It is up to the application developer to decide which urgency to assign." That is wrong approach. It should be for user to decide what is important. And woudl "color the header area in some way" be much easier to introduce than font color and size? Certainly from usability point of view adding three hard-coded colors for some users could make no difference as it may happen that they may have theme that would make header still not very distinguished against of what is behind it. So, three hard-coded color variation is still not very flexible solution.
That's why you don't hardcode the colors but inherit them from one's color scheme, which is what the default plasma theme does. I actually think it would be nice to be able to override or manually select the urgency level of a notification. It would give a further refinement to the handling of notifications on a per-application basis.
(In reply to Michael D from comment #32) > That's why you don't hardcode the colors but inherit them from one's color > scheme, which is what the default plasma theme does. > > I actually think it would be nice to be able to override or manually select > the urgency level of a notification. It would give a further refinement to > the handling of notifications on a per-application basis. Yes, that seems reasonable. We already allow a rudimentary form of this by letting you omit an app's notifications from the history. Perhaps what we should do instead is just let people choose/override the priority for each notification with a UI sort of like this: Priority: ( ) High (stays on screen until dismissed) ( ) Medium (times out and then remains in history) ( ) Low (times out but does not go into history)
Sounds like a nice idea to me!
Okay so we have three actionable ideas: 1. Use different header colors for the different ugencies of notifications (or maybe just for the high/critical priority level?). 2. Make the appear animation a bit more attention-getting. Maybe a scale up rather than a fade in? 3. Allow users to override each event's default priority level. For apps without per-event granularity, your choice would apply to all notifications.
> That's why you don't hardcode the colors but inherit them from one's color scheme, which is what the default plasma theme does. Isn't it a problem discussed above? Actually this is the source of the problem. This is what screenshot from users in this bug report prove. And I don't want to mess with all my colors just to fit them to notifications. At least allow to set these three urgency colors. It is obvious that there must be some contrast between notification color and whatever is behind it.
I made an account just to chime in that I too have problems with the poor color contrast of popups. See my attached screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/u17bklg.jpg If you look at it, and look really close at the top right corner you can just see the popup. Nothing crazy done with the colors there, it's just the default 'Breeze Dark' theme and a notify-send of critical urgency as an example. From a usability standpoint this is less than ideal. I've noticed in this bug conversation there has repeatedly been asked a question that implies there is a binary choice to be made: Does the theoretical notification you missed contain information that you SHOULD have been made aware of? YES -> THEN the notification must be held on the screen until you manual close it NO -> THEN it's information that you didn't really need to be aware of so it's fine if you don't see it. This is wrong (and makes notifications more like a non-modal dialog, which we already have). Notifications are also for information that only a user is able to judge the importance of. Notifications are therefore a balancing act between forcing the user to pay attention and allowing the user to easily ignore them. Making them so unobtrusive as to be invisible ignores that balance. It is important to differentiate between 'requiring user interaction' and 'requiring user attention'. Notifications should require user attention but because they don't require user interaction they are easily ignored. That is just one theory of UX though, Jakob Nielsen says: 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/ > #1: Visibility of system status >The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate >feedback within reasonable time. If you don't see the notifications, you aren't informed. In my case, part of my issue may just be an accessibility one, I can't hear any notification SOUNDS so notifications must VISUALLY grab my attention, and they completely fail to do that (even when using 'Breeze High Contrast' colors). I've even tried "Use visual bell" under Accessibility, but notifications seem to be immune to it's usual magic. I don't know what the solution is but it's obvious to me there is an issue. In addition to all the other solutions the smart people are thinking about, I'd like to add these additional ideas to ponder: make 'Use Visual Bell' work with notifications, allow notifications to appear closer to the middle of the screen, modify the 'Breeze High Contrast' colors to increase notification contrast with other windows, develop a new Desktop Effect specific to notifications (throb? blink? rainbow?) I find that KDE is by far the best UX experience, which is ironically why this one UX wart is so irritating.
I recently discovered a nice sliding notification effect by Vlad Zahorodnii that, at least for me, makes notifications much more attention-grabbing: https://github.com/zzag/kwin-effects-sliding-notifications It's not perfect (e.g. the shadow disappears when the notification dismisses), but it's better than the fade-in/out effect.
Yeah, I really love that effect. I'd be thrilled if it was upstreamed and made the default notification appearance effect after a few rounds of tweaking and bugfixing. I've heard other VDG people express similar sentiments. Vlad, what do you think?
> allow notifications to appear closer to the middle of the screen Yes. Regardless of other visual effects, adding screen center position to already existing positions would be a plus. I like the sliding effect but only sliding effect will not make desired usability big difference (at least in my case). Let's imagine you turned your head because someone was talking to you. If you get back to look at your screen and notification is already there but there is no contrast in colors there is still a chance you will miss notification. Color variation is a real game changer.
Although colors of notifications are crucial for me, it is worth remembering that some users may suffer from various medical conditions like for example Achromatopsia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achromatopsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness https://www.amirahchambledesign.com/blog/designing-with-the-color-blind-in-mind If you had your driving license exam you certainly remember a test that checks if you can recognize colors correctly. That's why other visual effects and font size may be important to some users.
@Nate Graham Would it be possible for KDE team to add center of screen position to already existing positions sometime in the near future, regardless of other changes? For some users it will make a huge difference, without waiting for all other goodies to come?
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #39) > Yeah, I really love that effect. I'd be thrilled if it was upstreamed and > made the default notification appearance effect after a few rounds of > tweaking and bugfixing. I've heard other VDG people express similar > sentiments. > > Vlad, what do you think? Upstreaming was never really my intent, I implemented the effect so it looks the way I like it (quite selfish). Note that the effect for sliding panels is quite generic. You could re-use it for sliding notifications, however I'm not sure about the final visuals...
Apparently you're not the only one who likes it. :)
*** Bug 456420 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***