Can't turn off window transparency KDE taskbar [not solved]

[jesnow]

At some point KDE turned on window transparency, and it's difficult to get it to not do that.

1) What to do?
2) I HATE window transparency
3) Why is this so hard to do? Why don't they have a checkbox that inhibits it?

Should I file a bug? It's really annoying.

Thanks in advance
Jon.

[Chiitoo]

What sort of transparency? That is, is it just some applications or certain other parts?

Do you want /any/ compositing or/and desktop effects to happen?

They should be in KDE System Settings, under 'Workspace Behaviour' and 'Display and Monitor'.

At least Konsole has its own setting for transparency, under Profile/Appearance, but that would not work without compositing enabled either.

(I don't use a full KDE Plasma desktop, but only some parts of it for LXQt (KWin), and I don't know about Wayland in case that is being used here.)
_________________
Kindest of regardses.

[jesnow]

Correct, I don't like *any* eye candy crap, but I am especially offended by window transparency. I don't like any applications to use it for any reason. It always takes me hours of turning off useless junk to set up a system. I have "enable compositing on startup" unchecked and all desktop effects turned off.

It looks like the KDE task manager is the main offender. It insists on using transparent windows despite these settings.

Cheers,
Jon.

[Hu]

You could take the heavy handed approach of switching to an environment that lacks the ability to enable these features. Some of the more niche environments are both resource efficient and unable to do the features you dislike, so you will not need to disable them.

[jesnow]

I like the other things KDE provides, it's mostly a pretty nice ecosystem of apps, and usable enough. It's a case of "default all eye candy on": Developers can't imagine that users don't find their app central to their entire experience on the computer, and can't imagine that users wouldn't want to exploit the fanciest capabilities of their graphics cards.

My system has plenty of resources to show all the bling, I just find it mostly visually irritating. The subtle transparent shadowing behind the window with focus, OK, I almost don't notice that's there. I don't mind it. But the KDE menu is so transparent, I almost can't read the text if there's anything behind it. There *is* a setting for window transparency, just that app is ignoring it.

"Switch to <other DE>" is the retreat option, meaning rather than figure it out you simply block off some part of the world. That may be fine if you're a teenager, and the world is open to you. But even for a teenager after a few years or decades of doing that in your life you find you can't do much of anything anymore. Especially when the world changes to make <that stupid thing you hate> the only way to exist. For example systemd. Or the Office Toolbar. Or automatic transmissions.

I guess I'm going to go file a bug about this with KDE. I've had other irritating bugs fixed, it takes a while, but eventually they get around to it.

[jesnow]

Neat relevant feature:

I'm sure nobody is following this thread, but I found a neat thing: Under "System Settings" > "Window Management" > "Window Behavior" > "Window Actions" in the section "Inner window..." you can change the combination <alt-mousewheel> to "change Opacity" and this works.

Once you apply it, you can use alt-mousewheel to make any window transparent, so you can look behind it rather than having to move it to the side to see what it just popped up over. I will use this in the future.

BUT the KDE menu remains stubbornly transparent, I can make it *more* transparent this way, but not less.

Cheers,
Jon.

[jesnow]

Partial success:

Right Click on the taskbar and click "Enter Edit Mode", then click "More Options". A menu appears on which you can choose Opacity "Opaque". This sets the KDE menu to be opaque. But other menus (like submenus of the KDE menu) remain translucent. You can still alt-mousewheel to make them more transparent but not less.

Getting there. -JS

[CooSee]

from https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/10vagb7/how_can_i_change_the_taskbar_transparency/

[Chiitoo]

Just to confirm, are you running with an X11 or a Wayland session?

I don't think I've seen transparency being possible with X11 without compositing, so it seems quite strange that you would still have it with it disabled (if indeed running with X11).

Interestingly, in a test VM I have with Plasma on it, I have 43 options in the Desktop Effects list when compositing is disabled, but only 20 when it is enabled.

Translucency is one of those that disappear, which indeed does not work with compositing disabled for me... but I do still get it when compositing is enabled, regardless of not having the effect available in the list (very intuitive... that). There is a Blur effect that mostly seems to get rid of it... but not sure if that is even intended.

This is with Plasma 5.27.5 though, so a bit old...

Also, the applications are not strictly part of Plasma, they're just both provided by KDE.

That is, you can of course use any DE you want, and still use the KDE apps (like I do with LXQt), so that in particular should not stop you from trying something else. ^^
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Kindest of regardses.

[jesnow]

Thanks! X11. I'm going to be very sad when X11 goes away -- I run remote apps on headless systems all the time. Different topic. I would put Wayland in the class of things I don't want but will someday be forced to use (and lose functionality I like) because it's "just what you do now".

Maybe I haven't disabled compositing properly -- I went to "Display and Monitor" > "Compositor" and unchecked "Enable on Startup".

I'm pretty sure the icons-only task manager is part of core KDE plasma.

https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/Tasks

If you look up the thread, I realized that there are some compositing effects I like (the subtle translucent shadow around windows for example, that gets stronger when a window has focus). So really disabling the compositor may not be what I want. I just don't like windows to ever be translucent or transparent. Also up the thread, I found the setting where you set the task manager opacity -- when that is set to "opaque" then at least the KDE menu becomes opaque, but all the other menus are still translucent no matter what you do.

There are other task managers you can use with KDE plasma, I could look into those. I'm starting to think I've found all the config options that are *supposed* to do the job.

Cheers,
Jon.

[Chiitoo]

[CooSee]

[jesnow]

No Wayland. Will never use it. KDE does have such an option, but taskman does not respect it.

Cheers,
JS

[jesnow]

I now understand that xwayland will allow me to do the things I'm accustomed to doing on remote systems, so it's all good. But I will be about the last adopter of wayland. I'm not interested in the cutting edge.

Cheers,
Jon.