Bug 512363 - Context Menus are bigger than expected
Summary: Context Menus are bigger than expected
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Breeze
Classification: Plasma
Component: general (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: 6.5.3
Platform: Arch Linux Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-11-20 00:52 UTC by thederpyworld
Modified: 2025-11-23 01:33 UTC (History)
11 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed/Implemented In: 6.5.4
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
left is the old version, right is post-update (338.54 KB, image/png)
2025-11-20 00:52 UTC, thederpyworld
Details

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description thederpyworld 2025-11-20 00:52:56 UTC
Created attachment 186969 [details]
left is the old version, right is post-update

SUMMARY
On Arch Linux, after upgrading from `breeze` from 6.5.2-1 to 6.5.3-1, the context menus appear bigger than before. I've appended the before-after in the attachment.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Use <=6.5.2 and notice the context menu
2. Upgrade to >=6.5.3 and notice the context menu is thicker

OBSERVED RESULT
Context menu buttons are thicker.

EXPECTED RESULT
Context menu to stay the same size.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Arch Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.20.0
Qt Version: 6.10.0
Kernel Version: 6.14.9-zen1-1-zen (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 6800HS with Radeon Graphics
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (14.9 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon 680M

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Comment 1 Synthetic451 2025-11-20 03:15:12 UTC
Yeah this new version causes menus to be way larger than before. The increased mouse travel is incredibly annoying, especially in apps that have long context menus (right clicking on a folder in Dolphin for example). It also takes up large amounts of screen real estate on smaller screens. This should be adjustable at least.

Currently it feels like its a touch-centric interface rather than the desktop-centric focus KDE previously had.
Comment 2 Akseli Lahtinen 2025-11-20 09:50:56 UTC
First of all, I apologize for cherrypicking this change too early. It would have been better to release it with next release of Plasma, where changes like this are more expected.

The change itself is intentional: Our Breeze QtWidgets style has been woefully out of date for long time now. It has not followed the standard values we have for menus, which have been declared by Kirigami. This has caused inconsistency between the two styles for longer time.

This change was done in this MR: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/merge_requests/563

Now the values are mostly the same, though there were bugs that caused it to have too much padding than it supposed to have. I did not notice this due to difference in font choices causing different values! However, it has now been fixed and cherrypicked to next release:

- https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/merge_requests/568
- https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/merge_requests/570

So I apologize for this sudden, and understandably bit jarring change. But I believe it was a good change: It allows us better to evaluate the sizes for context menus now since they're same across QtQuick and QtWidgets apps. And now if we want to make the size smaller/bigger, we have same starting point and avoid this pixel hunting.

The point of these changes was not to make thing bigger/smaller, but unify the values used across our stack. QtWidgets style has been using wrong values for years! And the values are wrong, because they were not using the standardized values depicted in our HIG: https://develop.kde.org/hig/layout_and_nav/#spacings-and-sizes

So technically we all got used to a bug, so now that we fix this bug, it's going to be jarring. 

Again, apologies for being too hasty with the cherrypick to the stable branch. I should have waited. But this change would have happened later anyway, with probably same reaction. 

We'll be monitoring for the sizing here over time now. I hope users can give it some time to get used to, especially when the fixes linked above land to your system.

> This should be adjustable

Sadly this is not as easy as I'd like it to be. I would have done it already otherwise. It will take a lot of changes across the stack to keep our margins synced between QtWidgets and QtQuick styles to avoid any weirdness. However, Union will alleviate this issue by allowing people to change these values to whatever they wish. I can't promise anything, but I am hoping to add somekind of density setting, so people can choose whatever amount whitespace is comfortable for them.

I will set this as resolved intentional for now. Again, apologies for merging this in "too soon." I'll do better next time.
Comment 3 Synthetic451 2025-11-20 20:14:22 UTC
I understand the need for consistency, but could we perhaps revert this until Union with density config rolls around? This is a usability nightmare. Additional mouse travel and the menus feel so bloated on my laptop devices. Feels like a regression IMHO, especially since it's in a point release.
Comment 4 Sauf 2025-11-20 20:42:44 UTC
(In reply to Synthetic451 from comment #3)
> I understand the need for consistency, but could we perhaps revert this
> until Union with density config rolls around? This is a usability nightmare.
> Additional mouse travel and the menus feel so bloated on my laptop devices.
> Feels like a regression IMHO, especially since it's in a point release.

+1 Totally agree
IMHO it shouldn't release with plasma 6.6, until Union is ready. (In my humble opinion even If Union is ready, the default value should be smaller. Just compare right menu in Dolphin vs Places panel of Dolphin. I appreciate the consistency and following HIG, but If it is the case, shouldn't HIG change?)
Comment 5 kaminata 2025-11-20 22:09:15 UTC
Please revert to the old style menu. This big menu is ridiculous. No matter if it was introdiuced now or later, intentional or not, the menu is still weird, very big and uncomfortable. In my case it takes 75% of my screen height...
Comment 6 agarplayerarlon 2025-11-20 22:22:09 UTC
Please revert to the old style right now, you've changed the blur and made it worse and then fixed it, now you changed the padding of the breeze theme, made the buttons huge and ugly, with a size that doesn't fit with anything else in kde's breeze theme, please, revert back to the old size!
Sorry for not being professional but I'm just frustrated by how many issues kde 6.5 had, remember, if it's not broken don't fix it!
Comment 7 agarplayerarlon 2025-11-20 22:29:13 UTC
(In reply to Akseli Lahtinen from comment #2)
>I hope users can give
> it some time to get used to

Sorry to say it but how can I get used to something that looks genuinely worse than before? It also looks so out of place and it takes too much space! Nothing in KDE has this much padding so of course it looks out of place, and I hope KDE will revert this and never add so much padding to any part of it again.
Comment 8 Nate Graham 2025-11-21 00:01:44 UTC
 So this was a change originally intended for Plasma 6.6, but it got backported to 6.5.3 by accident before it was fully complete. As a result, the visuals that folks are seeing here are not the final visuals. The intended appearance (shorter menu items) will be shipped as a bug-fix in Plasma 6.5.4.

The final appearance will result in menu items being a little bit taller than they were before, but not as tall as got released by accident.

Thanks for your patience, everyone!
Comment 9 Akseli Lahtinen 2025-11-21 00:05:55 UTC
As a sidenote, if you feel strongly about this, you can ask your distribution to backport the following:

- https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/commit/4a8a46aba6b9e39bfb02c7f46933079b5a50eff5
- https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/commit/2cd5b37dad8f213aab4029b6d3b80ca7f159ea50
Comment 10 kaminata 2025-11-21 00:37:23 UTC
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #8)
>  So this was a change originally intended for Plasma 6.6, but it got
> backported to 6.5.3 by accident before it was fully complete. As a result,
> the visuals that folks are seeing here are not the final visuals. The
> intended appearance (shorter menu items) will be shipped as a bug-fix in
> Plasma 6.5.4.
> 
> The final appearance will result in menu items being a little bit taller
> than they were before, but not as tall as got released by accident.
> 
> Thanks for your patience, everyone!

Thanks, so we'll wait for Plasma 6.5.4!
Comment 11 Synthetic451 2025-11-21 08:57:04 UTC
Arch seems to have pulled in those two patches and now the menus look much more sane. Thank you for the fix!
Comment 12 Akseli Lahtinen 2025-11-21 09:01:06 UTC
(In reply to Synthetic451 from comment #11)
> Arch seems to have pulled in those two patches and now the menus look much
> more sane. Thank you for the fix!

Glad to hear it, I made a mail about it to our distro mailing list so maybe more distros will follow.
Comment 13 agarplayerarlon 2025-11-21 10:55:04 UTC
(In reply to Synthetic451 from comment #11)
> Arch seems to have pulled in those two patches and now the menus look much
> more sane. Thank you for the fix!

I've tested it on Arch and now the menus looks much better, it would be cool if Fedora did the same