Quick Tiling in KDE Plasma on openSUSE

In my short time of using a tiling window manager, I very quickly became aware of the benefits of quick tiling features on the desktop. Being able to very quickly split your screen and be able to see information side-by-side, like writing a post and having my collection of pictures beside it is incredibly useful and a productivity enhancer. There were some things about a tiling desktop that I didn’t like as well. It was far too ridged for my liking so I wanted to explore adding some tiling features into Plasma but with not losing the benefits of floating windows as well.

Here are the changes I made to make my “Desktop Life” a bit more efficient and to manipulate things just a bit more quickly. The way I see it, the desktop you work in should mold itself to how you prefer to work, not the other way around. Everyone thinks differently and works differently. I don’t believe that any one particular work-flow is better than the other. I do however believe that the workflow I choose for me is the best one for me. I also believe that I should be open to making adjustments as I see fit.

This is the reason that I consider Plasma to be the best desktop available as I can make it work brilliantly for me and I am free to change every aspect of it. Although I believe these features have been in Plasma for several releases, I am currently using KDE Plasma 5.17.4 on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I have not tested this out on any other distribution.

Setting Hotkeys

In order to mimic the tiling features of i3, and I do mean mimic, you have to set the hotkeys. This is done by going into the Plasma SystemSettings > Shortcuts and selecting the Kwin Component.

Quick Tiling of Windows around the screen

Eight Locations for quick tiling around the screen. I mostly use Left and Right but I also use the quadrants of the screen as well

Bottom > Meta+Shift+Down
Bottom Left > Meta+Ctrl+Shift+PageUp
Bottom Right > Meta+Ctrl+Shift+PageDown
Left > Meta+Shift+Left
Right > Meta+Shift+Right
Top > Meta+Shift+Up
Top Left > Meta+Shift+PageUp
Top Right > Meta+Shift+PageDown

Switch Window Focus

When you have the windows tiled side-by-side or top-to-bottom and such, you may want to switch windows rapidly. Keep in mind, if you have a bunch of floating windows going on the same desktop, they can insert themselves on you in such a way that you may not expect.

Switch to Window Above > Meta+Alt+Up
Switch to Window Below > Meta+Alt+Down
Switch to Window to the Left > Meta+Alt+Left
Switch to Window to the Right > Meta+Alt+Right

Window to Desktop

This is very handy when you are working in an application and you want to push it to another desktop. Where I often do this is, I will open another browser or terminal window and I may have it tiled and I decide that I want to move it to a specific desktop for a different group of tasks. While I am working in that window, I hit the key combination and instantly, that window has moved to a different virtual desktop.

Window to Desktop 1 > Ctrl+Shift+F1
Window to Desktop 2 > Ctrl+Shift+F2
Window to Desktop 3 > Ctrl+Shift+F3
Window to Desktop 4 > Ctrl+Shift+F4

Additionally, I have set the Switching to those virtual desktop as follows:

Switch to Desktop 1 > Ctrl+F1
Switch to Desktop 2 > Ctrl+F2
Switch to Desktop 3 > Ctrl+F3
Switch to Desktop 4 > Ctrl+F4

I generally only run four desktops. I once ran more but found I only used the first 4. You can obviously tweak this to your particular case.

Present Windows

This is very handy and I have also duplicated this with a screen edge mouse trigger as well.

Present Windows (All Desktops) > Ctrl+F10
Present Windows (Current Desktop) > Ctrl+F9
Present Windows (Window Class) > Ctrl+F7

To add the screen edge trigger, go to SystemSettings > Workspace Behavior > Screen Edges

For me, I have set the Top Left corner for Present Windows (All Desktops), Top Right for Present Windows (Window Class) or in this case it is Current Application and Lower Right for Present Windows (Current Desktop).

Testing and Using

Here is where the “rubber meets the road” as it were. If you cannot remember the shortcuts or they don’t make sense to you, then it isn’t going to work for you. The computer I set these key sequences is on a laptop without a number pad

Exporting the Shortcuts

Assuming you have more than one computer, you may want to export the sequences rather than do them all over again. To do so, within the Global Shortcuts utility, go to the File button in the lower right corner of the window and select Export Scheme, the components you want to export, select OK and save the file to your location. There isn’t an automatic extension on the file so I just appended “*.scheme” so that I would know what it is.

Quick video

Because all the kids are doing it these days and I want to reclaim my youth, I created a quick video as well.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I am quite pleased with these functions. They do make working on my system a bit more enjoyable and efficient. Does it save me hours in the day? No, maybe only a few minutes but it feels real good to quickly tile windows, move them to alternate desktops and switch to those desktops. There are many more functions available to utilize but don’t overwhelm yourself in memorizing all of these little key combinations. Just do what makes sense for you and play around with it.

There are a few functions or benefits that I don’t get in the tiling manager, at least it is not as obvious to me. The rapid shifting of sizes of two tiles that are side by side. Right now, you are kind of locked into 50% or 25% of the screen. I am not aware, currently, how to rapidly make it a 60/40 split or similar. I am sure that there is a plug-in or extension to add such a feature but I don’t want to lose my floating windows or add any possible irritation in using my desktop either. As it stands right now, I have been able to add the features that I want and I get to keep what I like. I can have what I believe to be the best of both worlds.

References

Regolith Linux Review
YouTube Video of adding tiling to KDE Plasma