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Pager: open Overview by clicking the current desktop

Kisaragi Hiu requested to merge moonlight/plasma-desktop:pager-overview into master

Right now, the only ways out of the box to trigger the Overview are:

  • Meta-Tab (requires using a keyboard)
  • On a laptop, using a touchpad gesture

This makes the Overview not very discoverable.

Other environments have similar options:

  • Windows 10 and 11 both just have a button to open their Overview equivalents;
  • elementary OS's pager is an ordinary item on its dock
  • GNOME used the words "Activities" on the desktop, as well as made it a button to be clicked
  • GNOME 45 made the button a workspace indicator, like a lightweight pager

This MR would add an option to open the overview by clicking the current desktop in the pager, and also make it the default behavior (instead of doing nothing). While it wouldn't be as clear as the other examples, it would at least provide a built-in way of accessing the overview using the mouse.


Some possible issues I can think of:

  • The D-Bus signal used to open the Overview is org.kde.kglobalaccel /component/kwin org.kde.kglobalaccel.Component invokeShortcut "Overview". This is because there doesn't appear to be another signal for the same job. Perhaps a proper signal should be added first?

  • This will appear broken if Overview were turned off as an effect. The option to open would still be there, but it would do nothing.

    In my opinion the problem here is that it shouldn't have been possible to turn off a feature like the Overview in the first place, similar to how Alt-Tab or Activities don't have a switch in the Effects list. The fact that Overview can be turned off is just an implementation detail leaking out to the user --- if the user doesn't use the Overview, they can just unbind the key, similar to, say, unbinding Alt-Tab or unbinding keys for activities.

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