In order to avoid automatic sleeping after certain inactivity, I go to "Energy Saving" in Plasma settings and disable "Suspend session" then my machine should never be put to sleep, but this doesn't work at all when I let some apps like Virtualbox running over night after which I found my session in sleep state (some apps like Elisa and Firefox have their power options which force my machine to never sleep) In tray system there's battery icon which has an option to disable automatic sleep and lock, I don't know which option has more priority : the "Suspend session" in "Energy Saving" or the one in battery widget ! The more confusing is the existence of power management for activities, which means you can set power management plan for each activity : but which power plan will have more priority : the one set per activity or "Suspend session" or the widget setting ? What I can say is this look like a mess and very confusing for an average user, it should be fixed to become more logical and intuitive without much ambiguity.
And the most weird thing is in "Advanced power settings" (which user predicts to contain real advanced power options) but we found only media player options ! It should be called extra and not advanced.
Let's forget activities and the "Advanced Power Settings" page for now, as those are really separate issues. The checkbox in the applet is a way to temporarily override the main setting, hence the word "Allow" at the beginning of it. Do yo have a suggestion for a way to make this clearer?
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #2) > Let's forget activities and the "Advanced Power Settings" page for now, as > those are really separate issues. > > The checkbox in the applet is a way to temporarily override the main > setting, hence the word "Allow" at the beginning of it. > > Do yo have a suggestion for a way to make this clearer? There might be better solutions, but it could be suitable to : - Synchronize "Allow automatic sleep and lock" in the widget with main setting (I don't know if it's doable), or at least when user disable "Suspend session" in main setting it should implicitly disable "Allow automatic sleep and lock" in the widget, because for an average user every change in Plasma settings is considered global (system wide) and has top priority. - Or make it clear to user that "Allow automatic sleep and lock" in the widget is currently overriding the main setting, by adding text label (in main power setting page) that describes the current overriding.
(In reply to medin from comment #3) > (In reply to Nate Graham from comment #2) > > Let's forget activities and the "Advanced Power Settings" page for now, as > > those are really separate issues. > > > > The checkbox in the applet is a way to temporarily override the main > > setting, hence the word "Allow" at the beginning of it. > > > > Do yo have a suggestion for a way to make this clearer? > > > There might be better solutions, but it could be suitable to : > > - Synchronize "Allow automatic sleep and lock" in the widget with main > setting (I don't know if it's doable) Probably not, because in the KCM there are multiple settings for this, not just one. So you can't sync one setting with two; what happens if the user disabledone of those two settings in the KCM, but not the other (as I have, in fact)? > or at least when user disable > "Suspend session" in main setting it should implicitly disable "Allow > automatic sleep and lock" in the widget, because for an average user every > change in Plasma settings is considered global (system wide) and has top > priority. Same problem. The applet setting affects more than just suspending; it allows you to inhibit both suspending and also turning off the screen. > - Or make it clear to user that "Allow automatic sleep and lock" in the > widget is currently overriding the main setting, by adding text label (in > main power setting page) that describes the current overriding. That seems more realistic to me.
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/merge_requests/809
Git commit 8916b14f0e0d93a0e7ad7c7b25a3a4747647b294 by Nate Graham. Committed on 26/04/2021 at 11:55. Pushed by ngraham into branch 'master'. [applets/battery] Clarify power management inhibition UI The power management inhibition UI is currently somewhat confusing to users because it's not clear that the checkbox is a local override for the permanent settings set elsewhere in System Settings. A good sign that the UI is sub-optimal is that we refer to it as "power management inhibition" internally and in our developer conversations, but the UI expresses the opposite: *allowing* power management, not inhibiting it. This conflicts in the user's mind with the UI in System Settings that is also expressed in terms of allowing it. It is further confused by the fact that the message about apps suppressing power management is phrased in terms of being an temporary override, and that we also show an unrelated message about the battery charge limit (if set) in the same place where we're notifying the user about power management inhibition. Let's clarify this UI by doing the following: - Re-word the checkbox's label to emphasize that it's a local override for the settings that were set elsewhere - Move the charge level message into the battery item itself, since that's what it affects - Slightly re-word the message for when apps are inhibiting power management to emphasize that power management can be inhibited automatically by apps in additionto manually by the user FIXED-IN: 5.22 M +13 -0 applets/batterymonitor/package/contents/ui/BatteryItem.qml M +2 -2 applets/batterymonitor/package/contents/ui/PopupDialog.qml M +24 -23 applets/batterymonitor/package/contents/ui/PowerManagementItem.qml M +15 -15 applets/batterymonitor/package/contents/ui/batterymonitor.qml https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/commit/8916b14f0e0d93a0e7ad7c7b25a3a4747647b294