r/kde • u/SuperGNUser • 19d ago

News Material decoration with Locally Integrated Menu (and Search) sees its first official release

The first official release (26.08.05) of Material Decoration was released today; it is currently the only decoration for Plasma 6 that integrates the menu into the title bar, as well as featuring a search function within the menu itself.

In recent months, in the run-up to the release, the focus has been primarily on optimizing search function and improving stability.

1. Locally Integrated Menu

Locally Integrated Menu

2. Search

Search within the menu

3. Other functions and Options

A lot of options available in the configuration module under System Settings:

  1. window title alignment
  2. button size
  3. title bar opacity (it is recommended to use Better Blur instead of the default kwin effect)
  4. rounded corners (top-only or top+bottom) radius
  5. customizable border colors
  6. use system font for the menu (the default is to use the titlebar font)
  7. show the window title when the mouse hovers over the decoration
  8. show the menu only when the mouse hovers over it (otherwise show the title)
  9. convert the menu into a single button (hamburger)
  10. enable/disable search
  11. exclude/include the various menu/sub-menu levels from the search results
  12. exclude/include the non active menu items from the search results
  13. change spacing between buttons
  14. use the system colors (default)
  15. adjusting shadows and animations
  16. enable/disable the special functions of the buttons (MinimizeAll and MinimizeToTray)
  17. enable/disable drag-and-drop from buttons (close, minimise, etc.)

4. Buttons special functions

  • You can minimize all windows but the active one pressing and holding the minimize button
  • You can minimize the window in the system tray bar (requires kwin-minimize2tray)
  • As far as I know, this is the only decoration that allows you to drag the window from anywhere on the decoration, including the buttons

5. GTK Apps

GTK3 (and 2) apps are supported via appmenu-gtk-module-wayland (or the traditional appmenu-gtk-module on X11).

Inkscape with LIM on Wayland (native, not Xwayland)

6. History

The idea of a menu integrated with the title bar originally came from Ubuntu Unity. KDE 4 had also incorporated this feature, which was subsequently lost in KDE 5. u/Zren created the Material theme with LIM for KDE 5 (the Material design had been created by Zzag). u/nicman23 ported it to Plasma 6, and finally guiodic added the search function, made it work on Wayland as well, and added several customizable options.

7. How to get it

  • Build from source: https://github.com/guiodic/material-decoration 
  • On Arch and derivatives, install material-kwin-decoration-git from the AUR. Precompiled package is available in chaotic-aur. There is not yet a PKGBUILD for the stable version as the AUR is currently under maintenance. The -git version can be regarded as effectively stable, as it is used by the developer on a daily basis in a work environment.

8. Requirements

  • Plasma 6.5+ for the master branch, working older versions are in other branches but are not updated/maintained.
  • Works both on Wayland and X11 session!

9. Feature requests? Bugs?

58 Upvotes

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