6 KDE Plasma Features you *actually* didn't know

hello and welcome to yet another episode of six things that you didn't know six features that you didn't know about Kitty plasma and this time six features that you didn't actually know because if you know all six then I formally give you the right to dislike this video and whatever let's get started this is number one dolphin hidden places let's see so basically when you see files dolphin is seeing them thanks to a thing called key io's leads which basically you know give dolphin all the info about the files and to see that you just go into the dolphin address bar and then you type files and so on but files is not the only key i o sleep at all there are many as an example a bit of time ago you could simply type settings and that would bring up settings within dolphin actually and likely that doesn't work anymore but we still get a few cool ones as an example if you want to see all of your applications you can just type applications or programs and that will do the trick but this is pretty cool you actually can browse through Dolphin the main page of any comment just by using man as you would with https of course dolphin cannot display text files it should work out of the box in conqueror by the way but it will still prompt you to open up the documentation you can also see all the fonts that you have installed without even opening system settings just by typing fonts and that's it seriously and if you want to see the documentation of any KD application you can just type help as you would with https and then the name of the application like dolphin and that also opens up the help center immediately what else you can access dipped files or tar files using zip or tar you can have a timeline of all the files you've recently changed through timeline and you can see all of your activities by tapping activities if you have installed Bap which is an application to do backups you can also type bub I don't know what that does but you can and you can also go with Baloo search and that will allow you to search and that's pretty normal however you can edit what you're searching to get many more options compared to what's even exposed in the UI for Dolphin for normal search so that is also pretty cool and all of this within dolphin just by typing some words in the address bar that's pretty cool isn't it next up you probably know about K Runner but do you know about runners or do you know about all of them so when you see something when you search for anything in ke Runner it's thanks to a runner you type something that something is asked to each Runner and each single Runner can say yes I do have something that matches I don't have something that matches as an example you have a runner for applications a runner for files and so on and although kirana is probably very well known some Runners within karaner are are very well hidden so if you ever need some documentation about a certain Runner you can actually just type question mark and then the name of the runner you can also just you know click the question mark that doesn't actually show you old Runners just some of them so keep that in mind the first render you might not know is mobile applications so if you search right now for mobile applications and see just try to guess what's going to happen it's not what you think it's completely different so you will see a list of all the widgets that support being run within a window and you can just select one and it will open up as if it was an application except it's actually a 80 plasma Widget the same one that you would put in your desktop or in your panel but floating as a window pretty cool what else so you probably know that kitty plasma does support scripting you can create some scripts and you can install them from the internet however did you know that if you type desktop console in k-runner that will actually bring up a desktop console when you can just type any JavaScript code that uses the k-win or plasma apis to do like anything as an example you do have a web page with many examples and the last one tells you how to change things within your panel just with a bit of a JavaScript code and you don't need to know how to install scripts or anything you just open up the console copy paste and run and it just works out of the box isn't that impressive and then of course you probably know about this but you can also use YT search YouTube and WP to search Wikipedia actually you can customize what Runners to use for search and there's a variety of them there's like SoundCloud Vimeo Kitty bagzilla gitlab anything okay so did you know about all of this if so don't worry you won't know about this one which is a custom gestures let's say custom gestures but it's not that it's more than that so let's start off with a mouse gestures you probably know about like touch screen gestures and touch pad gestures forget about that Mouse gestures those that you can do with this little thing so basically how it works is that you use the middle button and then you just create a shape and for each shape that you can draw with your middle button you can assign a function that is anything literally anything something within a window by sending some keystrokes or a q bus command anything as an example I set it up so that if you just press the middle button and then go up it will open up overview which is extremely useful if you use a mouse very often actually now you don't have any Mouse gesture out of the box you need to create them you can just set whatever you want and you also have to enable the time on that checks for these events in the settings but yeah once you turn it on it's a pretty cool feature in it but that's not everything there's also application events and this is the coolest part so you can actually automatize in system settings your desktop such that whenever an event happens with some window something else happens and that haven't could be anything from as an example a window is opened or a window against focus and the thing that you do in response to it that event is again anything shortcuts keep your comments opening up overview if you want an example of why this is so powerful a stupid example but still you could make it so that whenever you focus or like click on a console the background becomes like a dark style background and whenever you open up a web browser instead the background becomes a light wallpap paper to make an example or a more useful one I guess if you open up a dolphin automatically also open up an instance of console so you have always this too if you use them a lot these kind of things it's all within system settings did you know that you didn't you didn't well if you did I will get you with this one desktop effects okay so you probably know about desktop effects but do you know about all of them some are pretty cool as an example you have invert which is disabled by default you have to turn it on but when you do you get shortcuts to invert your entire screen or just a window which is particularly useful actually let's say that I'm browsing a PDF document in a viewer like Firefox as an example that currently does not support Dark theme for any PDF I can just use that shortcut to invert the colors and voila I have a dark theme PDF and that that was easy or if you're doing anything artistic then often enough it's useful to invert the colors to see if you're doing everything correctly from a color point of view I do actually that very often you do also have draw marks which I think could be particularly useful for tutorials like this one I guess that allows you to just you know write on the screen with your mouse you have to press meta and Ctrl but of course you Metra meta shift meta control I don't remember but of course you do also have to enable this one in system settings because it's all off by default for some reason and then you can just you know right on the screen and finally we get to the coolest one which is thumbnails aside did you know about thumbnails aside don't lie so what this does is that again you have to turn it on because it's off by default but then if you press a shortcut which I think by default is meta shift t or meta control T it will take a window and create a thumbnail of the window on the bottom right you can customize the opacity of the window the size and the distance between the thumbnails and it's pretty useful if you have as an example a video that's going on and you just found thumbnail thumbnail it on the bottom right and start doing something else and you can still see it it's basically picture in picture but it works for any window literally any window this is so useful why is it why is nobody talking about this why is this off by default part 5 window management so you probably know about this but let's still say it if you middle click the maximize button of a window it will maximize but just vertically and if you right click it will maximize but just horizontally so you know now you know that you can also get either by right clicking the title bar or customizing the title bar so that it's always there a shade button which what it does is just the whole Windows disappears but the title bar is still there which is basically minimized but different personally I love it but I never minimize anyway so shade cool stuff by the way you can also add a menu bar to the title bar you can do that out of the box as a button and you will get all of your you know menu bar stuff inside of it but you can also do through a third party title bar this is the only one which is not fully plasma first party you can do a fully integrated local menu just like you know Unity it's very easy to install I think you have to compile a couple of packages and that's it you do get the menu just in the title bar for this feature actually there was a merge request to bring this to Breeze as an option but unlikely it was never finished last last thing about part 5 is window rules so again you probably know about window rules but did you know that it's incredibly easy to make one you just right click any window and then you just select more options create a special thingy for this window and that's it you can just select any property which will always be applied to that window as an example you can change its title you can change the color scheme of the title bar but you can also change the opacity of the window to make it transparent by the way the transparency actually makes the whole thing transparent also a text and you know things that you don't want to be transparent so you shouldn't over do that however there is part 6 which is getting a transparent blurry look without installing any third-party theme so usually you say Okay I want something blurry and transparent okay I have to install something no you haven't however it only works in kirigami applications and it's hacky it's terribly hecky but so if you go to the color scheme well you can change the colors but there is one thing that the color scheme editor doesn't actually expose to the user for a good reason and that is transparency you can actually change the transparency of any part of the window by changing the color scheme even though it's not exposed in the UI Nothing Stops you to do that from the color file file which is at this directory and you can just you know edit with Kate you've got all the colors you go to the color that you want which is probably the the background color and you make it complete transparent and then when you open up any origami application it will be completely transparent QT widgets applications are completely black but sorry if you do want also blur Behind these windows then you can get that by using the kwin scripts but blur my window I think it's called you just install the script it does blur behind windows it's pretty simple finally if you want even more transparency you can also make contacts menus transparent this is actually a feature that's supported out of the box you go into the application style you select Breeze you go into the settings you select transparency and then you change the slider this is such a nice feature but it's well hidden into a Sub Sub Sub Sub sub page and that is everything from me what else should I say honestly if you come into my comments and say okay I knew about all of this I'm not gonna believe you I actually spent hours doing research for each of these things and so many of these things I didn't know myself I actually discovered whilst doing this video and I'm a developer for Kelly so okay so before the video finishes I really want you to say a big big thank you to all the sponsors and patreons actually just you know patrons of my channel because it's the only thing that actually allows me to go on and do these videos and buy new lights as an example as you might have noticed and you know the my monthly goal is 700 euros and this month has been super successful I have been Way Beyond that so thanks everybody if you want to join in I've got patreon Liberty Paul Kofi literally anything that you can think of and any donation actually helps out this Channel and my personal involvement with Kitty so thanks everybody and see you in a couple of days maybe more than that with a new video by the way it's not a green screen it's real to set up

Channel: Nicco Loves Linux

Views: 19,422

Keywords: KDE, KDE Plasma, LINUX

Id: ybWFSIWEfVM

Length: 15min 31sec (931 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2023