Application Style

Mike McBride

Revision Plasma 5.20 (2021-04-09)

This module is used to configure how the individual widgets are drawn by Plasma™.

Note

A Widget is a commonly-used programmer's term for referring to User Interface elements such as buttons, menus, and scroll bars. You can think of them as the fundamental pieces that are assembled to make your application.

You can configure how the widgets are drawn with this module, but to change the color of the widgets, you should refer to the section entitled Colors.

The top grid, labeled Application Style contains a list of the previews of the pre-defined styles. Each style has a name, and a brief description is shown when you hover its item with the mouse pointer.

If you want to configure a Plasma™ theme, use the Configure Style... overlay icon at the bottom right of the widget style icon in the grid.

If implemented, it is possible to change almost every aspect of the style: center tabbar tabs, draw toolbar item separators, draw focus indicator in lists, draw slider tick marks, enable extended resize handlers, define keyboard accelerators visibility, windows' drag mode, use frames for the better accessibility, use buttons on the scrollbars, use transparency in the menus.

The general configuration can be made by pressing the Configure Icons and Toolbars button below the grid. This button opens a pane to select further settings.

Show icons: On buttons

If this option is selected, action buttons (like OK and Apply) will have a small icon located within them to act as a visual reference. If this option is not selected, then only text will appear on the button.

Show icons: In menus

If this option is selected, KDE applications will show small icons alongside most menu items. If this option is not selected, then only text will appear in the menus. Changes to the visibility of menu icons will only affect newly started applications.

Main toolbar label, Secondary toolbar label

These drop down boxes let you determine where on the button in both toolbars the text name of the button will appear as the default. If None is selected, then there is no text on the toolbar buttons. If Text only is selected, then the button's icon is replaced with a text name of the button. If Beside icons is selected, then the name of the button will be placed to the right of the icon. If Below icon is selected, the default will be to have the text of the button below the icon.

Tip

These options only specify the default location. Each application can override the settings used in this panel.

The Configure GNOME/GTK Application Style... button can be used to open the configuration tab where you can choose GTK theme, install GTK theme from file or Get New GNOME/GTK Application Styles from the Internet.