KDE Plasma 5.20 which is scheduled to be released later this year, just announced a new taskbar feature for this gorgeous desktop.
Update: OCT 13, 2020: KDE Plasma 5.20 Officially Released. Read the complete coverage here.
Taskbar redesign in KDE Plasma being discussed for some time and now, a new taskbar look is being introduced at the moment as KDE is atill in active development phase after the recent 5.19 release.
In the Plasma 5.19 release, currently, the taskbar is shown as a list of open or running applications with the taskbar icons and the application name label beside it.
And now it would look different. The new taskbar would contain the application icon only grouped by the applications. That means if you open 10 tabs in Firefox, there will be one Firefox icon in the taskbar with a popup menu showing a list of tabs.
This icons-Only Task Manager also pin some apps by default. This would be a dedicated panel of a width of 46px and a default font. This is how it might look like.
Moreover, this will be enabled by default when you boot up the desktop the first time. Of course, there will be options to switch it back to the older style as plasma gives you more tweaking control on your desktop over any other Linux operating system today without installing any tweak tool.
This is likely a welcome change for users and should not hamper your existing workflow or productivity. I will say it (although I don’t want to) it does look like the Windows 7 type taskbar if you think the other way.
A welcome change indeed in the upcoming KDE Plasma Desktop 5.20 and many more features also being added. Right now it is in development, so you can’t install it right away and configure. However, you can still download and install the latest Plasma 5.19 to experience many more such features.
Via blog, phabricator
