SUMMARY With the battery applet, there is the option to show the percentage on the icon. But this is difficult to read and thus takes to much time to look at. Personally I would prefer the option to have the percentage next to the icon, so it will be easier to read. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Click on battery applet in system tray 2. Click hamburger menu 3. Tick the checkbox to show percentage on icon. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Linux/KDE Plasma: kernel 5.15.28 KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.3 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.91.0 Qt Version: 5.15.3
Created attachment 147673 [details] Battery applet in various form-factors This _is_ an actual issue, indeed. However, for the system tray case it is virtually impossible to "fix": there are only square icons there. For the stand-alone applet, though, either on a panel on a desktop, it is technically quite possible to put labels alongside their batteries/icons; but on the other hand such form-factors of an applet are usually big enough that label's font size is not an issue anymore.
Similar to Bug 438316, but not exactly the same.
Looking how other platforms how have resolved this issue. For example, Apple or Android. They use a rectangle format widget in order to fit the percentage and the icon itself. I believe Plasma would benefit following this standard. Regards
Created attachment 157654 [details] Comparison of a draft design vs the current design Obviously a bit of a bodge job but even from a distance you can see it's much easier to read than the current :)
I've attached a picture of a comparison between the current % display and my own bodge-job of a battery display. You'll notice that I've kept the battery icon the same total size in both (so that it fits the square dimensional boundary for the icon) but removed the superfluous % (we already know this number represents %!) It's a lot more readable in this comparison, but obviously doesn't meet the same style as other KDE designs.
Created attachment 157655 [details] Example of charging applet icon design Also, since a linked bug mentioned not seeing when charging is available -- how about something like this? Windows prefers to have an animation but this little lightning bolt symbol is commonplace in other designs.
Created attachment 157656 [details] Example of low battery icon design And while I'm on a role... how about these for low battery?
Yes, it could work. We would need for the icon itself to incorporate the text though. To avoid having to make (100 x charging states) icons, this would need to be done in a programmatic way somehow, by doing it dynamically with some CSS or SVG properties or something.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 438316 ***