In order to change protocol to use smb:// or something like that with a mouse instead of directly typing it, one first needs to delete everything from the location bar. This makes the feature undiscoverable (I did not know it existed until now after 3 or 4 years of using KDE) and hard to use. This is a design issue and I can see several solutions: 1) Always show the file> or smb://> or etc Dropdown (that should be optionally hidable then) 2) Make the folder icon in the location bar clickable (what does it even do there?) and offer the protocol dropdown menu 3) Always show the arrow down dropdown that is next to the protocol when everything is deleted. I do not really have a preference, for discoverability 2) would be the worst, but most aesthetically pleasing. SUMMARY STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. 2. 3. OBSERVED RESULT EXPECTED RESULT SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: (available in the Info Center app, or by running `kinfo` in a terminal window) Linux/KDE Plasma: KDE Plasma Version: KDE Frameworks Version: Qt Version: ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The location bar in Dolphin has seen a lot of development work and improvements in 25.08.x. In the current version of Dolphin, 25.08.2, with default settings, I was not able to reproduce what you describe. It isn't necessary to remove the entire path in the location bar to add a protocol like smb or edit the folder path. I was able to use the mouse to move the cursor to the beginning of the location path and type smb there. I noticed you didn't mention which distribution you have installed, but you have Dolphin 25.04.3, which is an older version. When your distribution makes Dolphin 25.08.2 available, the location bar should behave more as you would like. If you still see a bug in Dolphin 25.08.2, please re-open this report and attach a video showing us the problem so we can look further into it. Thanks!
Created attachment 185960 [details] Video to show how difficult is to reach the dropdown menu I am not about the use case of directly typing it, but about selecting it with a mouse. I am sorry, I am on 25.08.01, I misselected it when reporting (I am on Fedora 42). I built it now with KDE-builder and used 25.11.70. I made a screencast to ilustrate the issue. When a menu context opens, I usually click right mouse button. I think everything is working as it should, there is no bug per se, I just think the interface is very confusing a nd the feature that offers other protocols is very much hidden. I somehow cannot get my head around it and it frustrates me to use it. I understand this is actualyl very hard to design so it feels natural, thre is a lot of functionality there.
Thank you for the screen recording. That makes it much easier to see what you're trying to do - get to the drop down for the protocol (rather than just typing it in). Honestly, I hadn't even realized there was a dropdown for the protocols until I saw them in the video. I'll reopen this and change it to a feature request.
Something actionable for us would be to make the protocol dropdown easier to activate and/or discover.
(In reply to TraceyC from comment #4) > Something actionable for us would be to make the protocol dropdown easier to > activate and/or discover. Yes, definitely that is what I ask for. I only discovered it recently and was amazed what all the protocols dolphin supports are.