Panel Colorizer

Fully-featured widget to bring Latte-Dock and WM status bar customization features to the default Plasma panel.

Important

This widget makes temporary changes to internal parts to the panel that aren't meant to be changed externally.

If you found a bug while using Panel Colorizer please report it here first, only report it to KDE after we conclude is a upstream issue or you removed the widget and can still reproduce the problem.

Make sure you're using the latest version of the widget and Plasma to avoid compatibility issues.

Project is under active development. Watch out for BREAKING CHANGES in the Release notes.

Demo

Screenshots

Features

Expand

Presets

• Built-in presets
• Create your own presets
• Preset auto-loading
  • Floating panel
  • Maximized window shown
  • Window touching panel

Panel/Widget/System Tray elements

• Color modes
  • Static
  • Animated removed in v1.0.0, might re-implement in a future version
• Background / Icons and text color
  • Custom
  • System
  • Custom list
  • Random
  • Follow parent background
• Shape
  • Spacing between widgets
  • Radius
  • Margins
  • Border
  • Shadow
• Blur behind (requires building and installing the C++ plugin)

Force Text/Icon color

• Force color to icons that don't follow the theme color for specific widgets
  • Mask for symbolic icons
  • Effect for colorful icons
• Periodic color refresh for widgets that reset colors when they update (e.g Global Menu)
• Recolor applications System Tray icons

Panel background

• Remove native panel background (transparent)
• Native panel background opacity
• Simulate an always floating panel

Unified background

• Join one or more widgets to make them visually connected

Configuration overrides

Overrides let you give a completely different configuration to one or more widgets

• Preset overrides (saved in the current preset)
• User overrides (sour own overrides that apply over the preset configuration and overrides)

Installing

KDE Store

1. Right click on the Panel > Add or manage widgets > Add new... > Download new...
2. Search for "Panel Colorizer", install and add it to a Panel.

• Plasma 5 version v0.2.0 No longer maintained

• Plasma 6

Manually

1. Install these dependencies or the equivalents for your distribution

   • Arch

     git gcc cmake extra-cmake-modules libplasma spectacle

   • Fedora

     git gcc-c++ cmake extra-cmake-modules libplasma-devel spectacle

   Spectacle is optional, will be used to create preset previews

2. Clone and install

   git clone https://github.com/luisbocanegra/plasma-panel-colorizer
   cd plasma-panel-colorizer

   • Install widget + plugin

   ./install.sh

   • Install only the plugin if you already have the widget

   ./install-plugin.sh

Arch Linux

aur/plasma6-applets-panel-colorizer use your preferred AUR helper e.g:

yay -S plasma6-applets-panel-colorizer

Nix package

For those using NixOS or the Nix package manager, a Nix package is available in nixpkgs-unstable.

To install the widget use one of these methods:

• NixOS

  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    plasma-panel-colorizer
  ];

• Home-manager

  home.packages = with pkgs; [
    plasma-panel-colorizer
  ];

• Plasma-manager: If the widget gets added to a panel it will automatically be installed

• Other distros using Nix package manager

  # without flakes:
  nix-env -iA nixpkgs.plasma-panel-colorizer
  # with flakes:
  nix profile install nixpkgs#plasma-panel-colorizer

How to use

1. Put the widget on any of your panels
2. Go to the widget settings to change the current panel appearance (right click > Configure...)
3. Widget can set to only show in panel Edit Mode (right click > Hide widget or from the widget settings)

Adding or improving the built-in presets

Instructions to add new presets or improve the existing ones are here

FAQ

Are changes permanent?

Changes to the panel are not permanent and can be removed by disabling or removing the widget

How to restore the default appearance?

• Click on the widget to disable/enable
• Or Widget Settings > Top left > Enabled checkbox
• Or removing the widget from the panel and restarting Plasma/logging out.

If you are troubleshooting an issue please do the third option and read the notice about reporting bugs at the start of Install section

How do presets work?

Presets are a way to store the current configuration, it allows to quickly switch between styles and also to use them on other panels.

How to manage presets

1. To start creating a new preset you can either load an existing preset you want to edit or start clean by restoring the default appearance first.
2. Go to the other tabs and configure them however you like.
3. Go back to presets tab and either update the existing preset or create a new one.

When you apply a preset it overrides the currently applied configuration with the one of the preset, you can always save the current configuration as a different preset if you want to preserve it.

After loading a preset and editing any of the settings the new changes are not automatically written to the last loaded preset, instead you should go back to the presets tab and update it.

Preset auto-loading

The same applies to the preset auto-loading feature, if you are making changes to your presets it is recommended to temporary disable this feature so your unsaved edits don't get overwritten when a preset auto-loads.

Updated to v1.0.0, where are my presets?

The location where they are stored has changed, the new locations are:

• Presets: /home/$USER/.config/panel-colorizer/presets/
• User overrides: /home/$USER/.config/panel-colorizer/overrides.json
• Text and icon options: /home/$USER/.config/panel-colorizer/forceForegroundColor.json

The format of the presets has changed, presets from previous version will need to be recreated manually

How does it work?

This widget works by inject/managing the background and colors and other properties of other widgets and the panel where it is placed.

Technical

Backgrounds are drawn by creating rectangle areas bellow widgets/panel, text and icons repaint is done by editing some elements color property and overwriting Kirigami.Theme.<something>Color colors for others, while this works for most widgets, there are some that won't because they draw text and icons differently to what this project matches, if you find a widget that doesn't get colors let me know here and I will try supporting it.

Performance

I tried to optimize it so CPU usage only increases around 0.5-1% on my computer, but usage could vary depending on your System or how many widgets are in your panels.

Can this widget change the appearance of other parts of Plasma (e.g Desktop view, widget popups/tooltips, overview)

Only the panel for now, the Desktop widgets might be possible, for the others haven't looked into but most likely not.

Bug reporting / Feature requests / Contributing

Please read the Contributing guidelines in this repository

Support the development

• If you like the project please consider donating/sponsoring this and my other open source work

  

• Give it a star on GitHub

• Rate / leave review in the KDE Store

Acknowledgements

• Search the actual gridLayout of the panel from Plasma panel spacer code that inspired this project.
• Google LLC. / Pictogrammers assets used for panel icon.
• sanjay-kr-commit/panelTransparencyToggleForPlasma6 / psifidotos/paneltransparencybutton for the implementation of panel transparency