Today brings you some optional updates to the Raspberry Pi Desktop, which gains some modern features while keeping its simplicity.
What is currently known as the Raspberry Pi Desktop has been around for over a decade now – it started out as a mildly customised version of the stock LXDE desktop, and over the years has slowly evolved into something with almost entirely different underpinnings, based on Wayland and labwc. The look has been refreshed on several occasions, with new icons, themes and desktop backgrounds, to the point where there is very little visually in common between today’s Raspberry Pi Desktop and the original LXDE.
But one thing which has never changed is the overall feel of the desktop, which, with its taskbar, status icons and main menu launcher, is very reminiscent of the state of the art in desktop design from 30 years or so ago, with Windows 95 and Apple System 7. Not without good cause – both were good examples of an intuitive desktop interface, and they have the benefit of being very familiar to most users. The intention has always been to offer a desktop experience which most people can simply use without a learning curve, and I believe our Desktop has offered that.
Desktop designs have continued to evolve in that time, and last year, I started to think that some of the features which are now commonplace in other desktops might be beneficial in ours. Since then, I have been working on a few ideas for how we might add these features to the desktop – not losing the fundamental simplicity of it, and not forcing change for the sake of change on users who are happy with the way it is, but just providing some more options.
I do have to stress here, before the anticipated deluge of complaints, that these new features are entirely optional; unless you choose to enable them, your desktop will continue to look and feel exactly the way it always has. These are purely intended to give users who want a more up-to-date desktop experience the option to have one if they want it. (So please, don’t immediately leap to the comments and complain that you don’t like the new look and we should never have changed it – if you do, I’ll know you didn’t actually bother reading what I wrote…)
So, assuming you do fancy a change, what do you get?
The icon dock and launcher
The biggest change is the introduction of an icon dock, which can either replace the existing taskbar, or be used in addition to it. Two new widgets have been added which are intended to be used in the dock – one is a graphical application launcher, and the other an icon-based combined quick launcher and task list.
The raspberry icon for the graphical application launcher opens the launcher screen. (This is intended as a replacement for the main menu widget which has been the standard application launcher up until now.)
This shows all the application icons which would have been in the main menu. By default, icons are sorted in alphabetical order, but they can be dragged and dropped to rearrange them. Single-clicking any icon launches the application; right-clicking (or a long press on a touchscreen) brings up a context-sensitive menu similar to that shown in the traditional main menu.
The search box can be used to filter the displayed applications, and the cursor keys and ‘enter’ can be used to navigate and select applications from the keyboard.
Right-clicking the raspberry icon and selecting the ‘Configure Icon Menu Widget’ option gives some configuration options for the launcher.
Enabling alphabetical sorting undoes any drag-and-drop rearrangement and restores the default order of icons.
Enabling menu categories makes the launcher hierarchical, with a top-level screen for application category icons which can then be clicked to enter individual launcher screens for each category – this is useful if you have a large number of applications installed. To help with remembering which applications are in which category, turning on composite category icons shows miniature versions of the first four application icons in each category in the top-level screen instead of the category icons themselves. (If menu categories is enabled, then drag-and-drop can no longer be used to rearrange the launchers; instead, the hierarchy and arrangement used for the main menu is used, which can be edited using the Main Menu panel in Control Centre as before.)
By default, the icons are displayed overlaid on the current desktop background, but in the event that this looks too cluttered, a transparent or opaque overlay colour can be applied.
The new task list
The combined quick launcher and task list can display a set of the most commonly-used application icons, and will by default show the same set of icons as the original quick launcher from the taskbar. New applications can be added by right-clicking an entry in the main menu or the graphical application launcher and choosing ‘Add to Launcher’ from the context-sensitive menu. As for the application launcher, icons in the quick launcher can be reorganised by dragging and dropping.
Clicking an icon launches the application. Running applications – whether launched from the quick launcher or elsewhere – are shown with a superimposed count of the application’s open windows. If an application was already in the quick launcher, this count is superimposed on the existing icon; if the application was not in the launcher, its icon is added to the end and the count is superimposed on the new icon.
Clicking on an icon for a launched application brings all that application’s windows to the foreground. If all the application’s windows are already in the foreground, a new window is opened (if the application supports multiple windows).
Right-clicking an icon brings up a menu which shows all the application’s open windows, allowing them to be individually brought to the foreground, and offers options for maximising or hiding the application’s windows.
Applications can be removed from the quick launcher by right-clicking the icon when the application is not running, and choosing ‘Remove from Launcher’ from the context-sensitive menu.
These two new widgets are intended to offer alternatives to the existing main menu and window list, and while they are intended for use in the new dock, they can also be used in the original taskbar if desired; likewise, the original main menu and window list widgets can be used in the dock.
Customising the dock
The dock itself can be customised in the same way as the taskbar. A Dock page has been added to the Control Centre and offers options for colour, position and icon size.
One often-requested feature which has been added is the ability for the taskbar and the dock to automatically hide when not in use – if the ‘Autohide’ option is enabled for either, it will slide away when the mouse is not over it, and reappear when the mouse is moved to the edge of the screen where it has hidden. The ‘Exclusive’ option controls whether a maximised window covers the taskbar or dock; if exclusive is set for either, maximised windows will not overlap it. This can be useful if you want, for example, the clock to always be visible.
A new Widgets page has been added to the Control Centre which allows plugins to be placed in either taskbar or dock, and arranged as desired.
The dock offers two locations for widgets. The left-hand side of the dock is the dock proper, while the right-hand side is given over to the ‘tray’. This is intended to hold status icons, which are shown as two rows with the icons half the size of those in the main dock.
When icons are added to the tray, they are automatically split across the two rows such that the length of top and bottom is kept as consistent as possible. If more control over the split is required, the ‘tray split’ widget can be added to the tray widgets – this imposes a hard line break between the widgets at this point.
In order for either the taskbar or the dock to be shown, they must contain at least one widget – if either contains no widgets, it is hidden.
Note that the taskbar and the dock can be used simultaneously – for example, if desired, the status icons can be displayed on the taskbar as they are now, with just the new launcher and task list in the dock. (This is how my own desktop is configured.)
I’d encourage you to play about with the Widgets control panel to come up with whatever arrangement of taskbar, dock and widgets works best for you, but in order to make it easy to try the new features, an option to switch between a few preset desktop styles has been added to the Defaults page in the Control Centre.
Setting the style to ‘Dock’ will remove all widgets from the taskbar, add the new launcher and task list to the dock, and add the status icons in the tray. Setting the style to ‘Taskbar / Dock’ will add just the launcher and task list to the dock, while leaving the status icons on the right of the taskbar. Or if you just want the desktop as it has always been, set the style to ‘Taskbar’, which will leave the existing main menu and task list on the left of the taskbar, with the status icons on the right.
Other changes
One other small change which you can see in some of the pictures above is the addition of an analogue clock mode to the clock widget – simply right-click the digital clock, choose ‘Configure Clock Widget’, and turn on the analogue clock mode. The colour of the face and the hands can also be customised.
In addition to the dock changes, there is now the ability to use a more efficient mechanism for drawing the desktop background picture. This has always been drawn by pcmanfm, the file manager application – as this is the file manager, it allows icons to be placed on the desktop. But if desktop icons are not required, significant memory savings can be made by using the very lightweight swaybg program to draw the desktop.
This can be enabled in the Desktop tab of the Control Centre – switching off ‘Active Desktop’ disables the drawing of the desktop by the file manager and instead uses swaybg to display the same picture. (The Wastebasket which is normally displayed on the desktop can then be found in the Places pane in any file manager window.)
We now recommend disabling the active desktop for any platform with less than 2GB of memory – this is checked at boot, and a notification is displayed suggesting that active desktop be disabled. Also, if you choose either of the new dock-based styles for the desktop in the Defaults page, active desktop is disabled by default, but it can be re-enabled from the Control Centre if desired.
Note that the file manager was previously responsible for automounting removable drives; as this would no longer happen if the file manager was not running all the time, this functionality has now been moved into the ejecter plugin, which will now automount and display a notification when a drive is inserted.
A new Shortcuts page has also been added to the Control Centre. This allows all system keyboard shortcuts to be viewed and edited, and new ones to be created if desired. (Note that this only covers general system shortcuts, not those which are assigned by individual applications.)
One final change which has been made is an enhancement to the creation of screenshots. Previously, hitting the PrtScrn key took a shot of the entire screen and saved it to the Pictures folder. Now, hitting the key takes the screenshot and also opens a dialog offering the option to open the captured file in an image editor, or to copy it to the clipboard. (If you always want to do the same thing, just tick the ‘remember my choice’ checkbox before pressing one of the buttons, and the prompt will not be shown in future.)
Holding down Alt when pressing PrtScrn does the same thing, but first displays a selection rectangle allowing you to select an area of the screen to be captured rather than the whole screen.
How to get it
We’ve released a new image today with all these new features added. As I said at the start, these features are all optional – if you install the new image, the default appearance of the desktop will be the same as it has always been, with a taskbar and no dock; to try the dock, just launch the Control Centre, go to the Defaults page, and select either the ‘Taskbar / Dock’ or ‘Dock’ styles.
Similarly, for existing images, simply update using either the updater widget or the usual
sudo apt updatesudo apt full-upgradefrom the terminal. Again, installing the updates will not enable the dock; use the Control Centre as above to try it.
We do hope you enjoy using the new features – as always, do let us know in the comments or the forums how you get on, and what you think!
