So I’ve loved the minimalist aesthetic of Elementary’s Pantheon desktop for a long time now. I even ran Pantheon (on Arch) for a long time but eventually the quirks and bugs got to me and I ditched it. I’ve now been using KDE for several years but still sometimes get the itch for that aesthetic again.
I’ve almost got my KDE desktop to look enough like Pantheon to make me happy EXCEPT for the completely transparent top panel.
(It’s not so easy to see in the smaller image above, but the top panel is slightly transparent. Apologies, here’s another screenshot showing it is indeed semi-transparent.)
I have adaptive transparency turned on so that the panel goes opaque with maximised windows all good. The issue as you can see from the screenshot above is that when there’s nothing maximised, the top panel is barely transparent let alone fully transparent.
I understand this is from the theme I’m using (Breeze Dark).
I don’t want to use Latte dock. And every single set of instructions I have come across about how to alter themes has either been outdated, doesn’t work or says something along the lines of, “You need to edit the theme.” but doesn’t say HOW. I’ve searched for that too and come up empty - either outdated or doesn’t apply to Arch.
Can someone please tell me (bearing in mind that I have Cognitive Impairment so breaking down the instructions is very appreciated!) how I can edit Breeze Dark so that my top panel is completely transparent?
Or if there’s a simpler way to achieve this, please let me know! :) TIA!
You might be able to pull this off with kvantum, although I don’t know how.
I think I found out how to do what you want. In the System Settings app, you will go to “Workspace Behaviour” (right under Appearance), then in the submenu choose “Desktop Effects”, and either scroll down (number 2 in “Appearance”) or search for “Blur”. To the right there’s a configure button that you press.
In the popup you can then configure the Blur Strength and I suggest you put it all the way to Light (to the left). Noise strength i have no idea what does lol.
Hope this helps, and if you need pictures I can do that as well
Edit: This will also change other places with blur.
And also remember to change the opacity settings of the panel (In edit mode, edit the panel, to the right “more options”, and then you can choose from there)
Thanks for helping. I’ve already tried putting the blur all the way down (and fiddling with the noise, no idea what it does either) - the screenshots in my post are both with blur at 0 :( Also means my logout screen isn’t blurred properly and the icons are harder to see over the background.
My panel opacity is set to “Adaptive” so that it turns opaque with maximised windows. Even if I set it to be “Translucent”, it’s looks the same as it is in my screenshots.
I use the Panel Transparency Button on my desktop. You toggle it in edit mode and then it’s just hidden in normal use.
I tried that. Unfortunately it doesn’t play nice with adaptive transparency and makes the panel transparent all the time, so even when a window is maximised its still transparent. 😞
