Bug 514148 - Allow translucent shell surfaces to be opaque
Summary: Allow translucent shell surfaces to be opaque
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Alias: None
Product: plasmashell
Classification: Plasma
Component: Theme - Breeze (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: 6.5.4
Platform: Other Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: 1.0
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords: accessibility
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2026-01-04 15:59 UTC by Tech-Tac
Modified: 2026-01-06 16:27 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Tech-Tac 2026-01-04 15:59:51 UTC 
SUMMARY
OSDs, KRunner, widgets and other shell surfaces often have a translucent background by default when using the Breeze Plasma theme or other similar third party themes, which may impair text readability especially when blur is globally turned down, turned off, or otherwise unavailable or undesirable.

Panels already have an option to be opaque automatically or always, but this doesn't affect other components of the system like OSDs.

I propose adding an option to instead make the background of said components completely opaque to help with text readability and overall user experience in such situations.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.21.0
Qt Version: 6.10.1
Comment 1 David Edmundson 2026-01-05 11:24:32 UTC 
We already allow themes to choose their opacity level. Having user-facing settings that conflict with the theme changes isn't something we want as then you two ways to accomplish the same task which is a bad UX.
Comment 2 Tech-Tac 2026-01-06 16:27:01 UTC 
I am aware of this fact, but the accessibility issues still remain. Maybe we could ship opaque variants of Breeze for this purpose instead, since it is the default theme and should handle a wider range of use cases.