How to make KDE 5 taskbar act like the Windows 7 taskbar?

Question

I'm running KDE Plasma 5.5.5. I've chosen the "Icons only task manager" taskbar widget, which gets me halfway to the Windows 7 behavior. But when I have several open windows of a single app, I want them to get grouped in one button like they do in Windows 7 and Ubuntu Unity. How can I make it do that?

I've read that for KDE 4 these widgets do it:

• https://www.linux-apps.com/content/show.php/Fancy+Tasks?content=99737
• https://www.linux-apps.com/content/show.php/Smooth+Tasks+2?content=148813

But I'm not using KDE 4.

Solution

AFAIK this is the default in "Icon only task manager". Windows get grouped by application. In my system, which uses the latest Plasma 5.8.5, a small "+" symbol appears under icons for which more than one window is open. If I click on that, the "present windows" effect will let me choose which window I want.

KDE Plasma 5.5.5 is 9 months old (which is very old, by current Plasma developing standards) and the default settings may be different. I recommend you to update to one of the latest versions: several bugs have been resolved and some features added.

Comments

[Stefan Monov]

I'm on the Ubuntu Long Term Support release from April, which explains the old version. In the same vein, I'd like to avoid packages newer than what my Ubuntu version supports, for stability/quality reasons. So I'm not going to upgrade my KDE, and I welcome other options. Thanks anyway.

[AF7]

@monov Just to clarify, the current behavior is that you have a different icon for each window, without grouping, and there is no grouping option in the widget's menu, right?

[Stefan Monov]

That was the behavior, yeah. But I just tried switching to "Icon only task manager" again (I had switched to another one temporarily) and now it groups them. Some time before that I have rebooted as well. Weird. So it works now. I'm gonna mark your answer accepted when it lets me.

[AF7]

Thanks. The standard panel also groups items (or there is an option to do so), and it also only displays icons if there's not enough space for text, such as in a vertical layout. So if you like the vertical layout, you can also try that.

[DearVolt]

@AF7: Relating to your answer, how would you change the present windows effect? I would rather want to click on one of the previews than have the windows show up side by side.

[AF7]

@DJSquared I'm not sure I understand your questions. In the plasma setup I have on this work computer right now, clicking on the task-manager icons with the "+" sign triggers a small popup with a list of the windows. You want this, but with window previews?