Hartwork Blog

Show desktop (or minimize all) in KDE 4 2009-10-17

Disclaimer: Please correct me if you know better. Thank you.

Back in KDE 3 I’ve been using WIN+D repeatedly to minimize all open windows (“show desktop”). In KDE 4 the “show desktop” feature seems to have been replaced by “show dashboard” (CTRL+F12), which is quite a different thing and not what I want.

As missing the minimize-all hotkey started really bugging me I invested a little time to find out if this is really the end. Luckily it’s not though I can only present a workaround rather than a “real solution”.

The easiest (only?) way to assign global hotkeys to programs in KDE 4 is adding an item to the KDE menu. So if we had a program/command to trigger a toggle on “show desktop” we were done. I found a tiny Bash script to do that:

#!/bin/sh
target=on
if xprop -root  _NET_SHOWING_DESKTOP | fgrep '= 1' ; then
    target=off
fi
wmctrl -k ${target}

(requires xprop and wmctrl, i.e. x11-apps/xprop and x11-misc/wmctrl in Gentoo)

Put that in a file called toggle-show-desktop.sh or so, make it executable and add a KDE menu entry for it:
(The Menu Editor can be found in the contect menue of the “KDE button” also know as Application Launcher Menu.)

Now assign a hotkey in the “Advanced” tab, done.

For comparison/completeness in KDE 3 it’s here:

.. and in XFCE here:

My next post/rant on KDE4 will probably be about the removal of vertical gradiants as desktop backgrounds. No, I don’t wat to do that with Gimp. Seems like I’m the only one ever having used it. Anyway…

Filed Under Category: Frustration, Planet Gentoo
Comments: 16 Comments

16 Comments

hookahey October 17th, 2009

There is a plasmoid that does what you want. It is called “show desktop” and you can add it to the panel or the desktop itself. Additionally you can assign a shortcut for activating it. I guess that would be what you want. Although as you have showed having this as a plasmoid only is a bit too hidden so it should get integrated to the plasma desktop shortcuts. Try to bug the kde people for it ;).

Bye
Hookahey

jotik October 17th, 2009

And you’re not the only one to ever use the linear gradients. I’ve used it to get such light glow effects which I find simple yet quite expressive (e.g. http://pingviin.org/album_showpage.php?pic_id=353 please mind the xsnow). 🙂

andrew October 17th, 2009

I’m still using KDE3 at the moment but have you tried D-Bus commands?

In KDE3 you could do some pretty neat things using DCOP, does KWin provide a minimizeAllWindows function you could invoke?

(Open Systemsettings, Input Actions, Right Click>New>Global Shortcut>D-Bus Command, you can launch the D-Bus browser on the Action tab and see if you can find a function for it [Try looking under Kdesktop as well as Kwin])

Fedor October 17th, 2009

Actually you can setup active screen edges with such function.
also, as someone mentioned – plasmoid with a hotkey.

still i agree there must be a simplier way, hope they will work on it)

BAY October 17th, 2009

I missed that feature too. I have write a patch for kwin to this functionality.

In 12 of september my patch has been added to trunk for kde 4.4.

Buglink: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182729

BAY October 17th, 2009

If you don’t want to wait for kde 4.4, you may
1) download my overlay from http://209.250.241.67/data/kwin.tar.bz2
2) unpack the archive to /usr/local/portage/baypkg/
3) add a string ‘PORTDIR_OVERLAY=”${PORTDIR_OVERLAY} /usr/local/portage/baypkg”‘ to your make.conf
4) emerge kwin

Octav January 28th, 2010

They added an item called Show Desktop in Global Keyboard Shortcuts -> KDE Component – KWin.

Carsten Klein January 30th, 2010

Great tip. Thanks. I’ve been looking around the web for similar solutions for quite a while now, but none appeared. I wonder how you managed to find the script on the web and who is the original author.

Thanks!

Will September 2nd, 2010

Thanks so much for the trick!!

This is the only working solution I could find to this annoying issue. A lot of people keep saying “there is a plasmoid that does what you want” but no one dared to explain where to find this ghostly plasmoid yet.