KDE taskbar behavior.

Message

sokhapkin · Post by **sokhapkin** » Wed Jul 30, 2025 7:24 pm

When I hover mouse cursor over KDE taskbar, kwin shows tooltip for the application. If I hover over the tooltip, KDE hides all windows on the desktop except for the tooltiped application. How to disable this annoying behavior? I don't want windows hide when hover over tooltip.

rab0171610 · Post by **rab0171610** » Wed Jul 30, 2025 9:46 pm

sokhapkin wrote:When I hover mouse cursor over KDE taskbar, kwin shows tooltip for the application. If I hover over the tooltip, KDE hides all windows on the desktop except for the tooltiped application. How to disable this annoying behavior? I don't want windows hide when hover over tooltip.

You are correct. If you place your mouse over an application icon in the taskbar, provided that application is open, it will show a thumbnail preview of that application window. If you were to then move your mouse into the tooltip area and hover over the thumbnail preview of the associated application, then yes, you will be shown a full desktop preview of that application (essentially a type of zoom or enlarged preview). If you then click on that preview with the mouse it will then switch to that application on the desktop. If you do not wish to switch to that window or instance of that application, you simply move your mouse away and the enlarged fullscreen preview will disappear.
This is by design and is especially helpful when you have more than one instance or window open of the same application such as Firefox, Dolphin (file browser) or Konsole (terminal). This allows the user to get a thumbnail preview of each of those instances and then by moving the mouse over the thumbnail see a larger full screen preview. It lets the user get a peek at the thumbnail but also see a larger view when trying to work with multiple open windows, without having to go back and forth between the two windows. If you find this behavior annoying I would suggest not moving your mouse over the taskbar icons for running applications and then subsequently moving your mouse over the generated thumbnail previews that pop up. Problem solved.

sokhapkin · Post by **sokhapkin** » Wed Jul 30, 2025 10:00 pm

rab0171610 wrote:
This is by design .

The (mis)behavior was introduced in Plasma 6.3, it was not there in previous Plasma versions. So it is not "by design".

Oxyd · Post by **Oxyd** » Wed Jul 30, 2025 10:12 pm

Right click on the task bar, choose Configure Task Manager (or Configure Icons-Only Task Manager), and then on the appearance tab deselect “hide other windows when hovering over previews”.

sokhapkin · Post by **sokhapkin** » Wed Jul 30, 2025 10:16 pm

Thanks Oxyd! That worked.

Post by Hu » Thu Jul 31, 2025 12:32 am

sokhapkin wrote:
rab0171610 wrote: This is by design .
The (mis)behavior was introduced in Plasma 6.3, it was not there in previous Plasma versions. So it is not "by design".

The behavior you describe is far too complicated to arise by accident, and per rab0171610's description, seems like some people would appreciate it. Perhaps it is new in Plasma 6.3. To me, whether or not you like the behavior, if it works this way because the authors wanted it to work that way, then it is "by design."

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Thu Jul 31, 2025 3:21 am

Hm, in my KDE I do not even get tooltips at all when I hover over the taskbar (do you mean task manager ? ) I guess I have disabled it somewhere ages ago. I tend to disable tooltips altogether

But at the same time both options

Show small window previews when hovering over tasks

and

Hide other windows when hovering over previews

are set. So go figure ....

rab0171610 · Post by **rab0171610** » Thu Jul 31, 2025 4:08 am

It is by design. New features and behaviors are introduced into KDE with each update. The lesson to be learned here for the future is to take time to look at the applicable KDE settings menu to familiarize yourself with the different options that are available to you to customize the behaviors of different aspects of KDE to your liking. In this case, it was to right click on the task bar and choose Configure Icons-Only Task Manager. Fortunately, Oxyd took the time to do the work and explain it.
Here is a history of this particular setting:
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-de ... uests/2816

Post by **asturm** » Thu Jul 31, 2025 8:00 am

dmpogo wrote:Hm, in my KDE I do not even get tooltips at all when I hover over the taskbar (do you mean task manager ? ) I guess I have disabled it somewhere ages ago.

You likely have disabled USE=screencast

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Fri Aug 01, 2025 10:51 pm

asturm wrote:
dmpogo wrote:Hm, in my KDE I do not even get tooltips at all when I hover over the taskbar (do you mean task manager ? ) I guess I have disabled it somewhere ages ago.
You likely have disabled USE=screencast

Indeed !

KDE taskbar behavior.

KDE taskbar behavior.

Re: KDE taskbar behavior.

Re: KDE taskbar behavior.

Re: KDE taskbar behavior.