# Desktop Effects

&Mike.McBride; &Mike.McBride.mail;
2021-04-09
Plasma 5.20
KDE KControl desktop effects

This module is used to enable and configure desktop effects for Plasma.

The main part of this page is a list of all available effects grouped by Accessibility, Appearance, Focus, Peek at Desktop Animation, Tools, Virtual Desktop Switching Animation, Window Management, and Window Open/Close Animation.

Use the incremental search bar above the list window to find items in the list.

Normally there is no reason for users to change that, but there is a configuration button to modify the filtering of the list to show also those effects.

The easiest way of installing new effects is by using the built-in KNewStuff support in &kwin;. Press the Get New Desktop Effects button to open a dialog with a list of available effects from the Internet and to install and uninstall effects.

Please keep in mind that changing these sensible defaults can break your system.

Check an effect in the list to enable it. Display information about Author and License by clicking the info button at the right side of the list item.

Some effects have settings options, in this case there is a configure button at the left of the info button. Click it to open a configuration dialog.

To see a video preview of an effect click on the button.

Some effects are mutual exclusive to other effects. For example one would only want to activate the Maximize or the Magic Lamp effect. Both activated at the same time result in broken animations.

For effects in a mutual exclusive group the &GUI; uses radio buttons and manages that only one of these effects can be activated.

All effects which are not supported by the currently used compositing backend are hidden by default (⪚ OpenGL effects when using software renderer).

Also all internal or helper effects are hidden by default. These are effects which replace functionality from KWin Core or provide interaction with other elements of the desktop shell.