Forgive me if I screw up the terminology. I’m a bit unclear on which pieces are what…
So we’ve got this panel at the bottom of the screen. On the left, it’s got the application launcher and then a bunch of icons to launch specific programs. In the middle, there is a collection of rectangular boxes showing the running programs. And on the right is the system tray with its own collection of icons and the clock, and so forth.
With me so far? Good.
I increased the height of that panel just enough to give me two rows for the running programs. The system tray icons also went to two rows. Nice. OK, the clock is huge, but I can live with that.
The problem is those darned icons on the left. They’re flippin’ enormous! Probably because that part of the panel insists on taking up a full third of the width of the screen and the icons just resize to fit it.
Is there a way to shrink that leftmost section of the panel to use no more than, say 20-25% of the screen? If the icons can shrink and even go to two rows, that would be a bonus, but the key is to make more room for the running programs.
This is LEAP 42.1 with the default KDE5 desktop, fully updated as of this morning.
Thanks in advance!
You are going about it the wrong way, at least if I understand you correctly.
The bottom panel default size is usually a little big for me and I usually narrow it some and the running apps will fill it and adjust depending on the number you have
I must not have been clear enough. The problem is not the running apps. The problem is the icons on the left.
Take a look at this screenshot, please:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/peb5ud3j0ob5fdn/proportions.jpg?dl=0
See how large the icons on the left third of that screenshot are? I want to shrink that area and the icons in it to leave more room in the panel for the running programs.
I thought there was a slider between those sections when you go into panel settings, but apparently not.
Well those are set to fill the space. Large space large icons. Been that way forever. Other then having a separate panel I doubt there is a "solution? because it is simply the why KDE designed it.
I get that the icons are large because the space is large. I just don’t understand why there’s no way to make the space smaller–in other words, to change the proportion of the panel devoted to each section.
But if it’s not possible, it’s not possible.
Thanks.
Maybe put a panel on the left edge set to pop out and set the size to what you like and move the icons to that panel. But I don’t thing the spacer widget deal with hight only put a space in. Or I guess you could resize the panel and put a smaller one next to it for the icons.
Great minds think alike. I tried both of those options and didn’t like the way it looked.
What I wound up doing was deleting all of the icons I had added with the right-click, “Add to panel”, and then added a Quick Launch widget and recreated the icons in that. Set the widget to a maximum of two rows, and presto, problem solved. The icons are nice and small, leaving plenty of room for the running apps.
The only downside seems to be that the order of the icons changes randomly when I reboot. But I can live with that.
Thanks again for your help.
I grabbed the left side of my screen to show my launchers in a panel on the left that is set to auto hide
http://s20.postimg.org/6w63l9fft/screen.jpg](http://postimg.org/image/6w63l9fft/)
