Task Manager Colors

A KDE Plasma 6 plasmoid that adds per-application color overlays to your task manager.

Features

• Per-application colors — assign a unique color to each app in your taskbar
• Per-window overrides — temporarily override colors on individual windows
• 13 display modes — frame, top/bottom/left/right lines, center, background, background+frame, diagonal variants
• Nyan Cat rainbow — animated rainbow effect with flat and wave modes, per-app or per-window
• Auto color from icon — automatically extract and apply dominant icon color for all apps
• Icon color extraction — manual per-app color extraction from icons
• Soften colors — theme-adaptive tinting for better readability
• Window count indicators — segment dots for grouped windows
• Hover window mode — custom overlay style on hover (hide/background/custom)
• Plasma decoration control — per-state theme border customization (focused/normal/hover)
• Adjustable opacity — works on all styles (borders, backgrounds, diagonals, nyan)
• Vertical panel support — auto-adapts orientation
• Theme-aware — auto border radius and thickness from your Plasma theme
• 15 languages — fr, de, es, pt_BR, ru, zh_CN, ja, ko, it, nl, pl, tr, ar, uk, cs

Installation

From KDE Store (recommended)

1. Right-click your panel → Add Widgets → Get New Widgets → Download New Plasma Widgets
2. Search "Task Manager Colors" → Install

Or visit store.kde.org/p/2351299.

From .plasmoid file

kpackagetool6 -t Plasma/Applet -i com.comexpertise.plasma.taskmanagercolors-<version>.plasmoid

From source

git clone https://github.com/comxd/plasma-taskmanager-colors.git
cd org.kde.comexpertise.plasma.task-manager.colors
kpackagetool6 -t Plasma/Applet -i .

Then right-click your panel → Add Widgets → search "Task Manager Colors".

After updating

If the widget still shows the old UI after an update, restart Plasma shell:

systemctl --user restart plasma-plasmashell.service

Or log out and log back in.

Configuration

The widget popup has 5 tabs:

Tab	Description
Applications	Assign colors and Nyan Cat effect per app
Windows	Temporary per-window color overrides
Settings	Color mode, thickness, opacity, corners, focus behavior
Nyan Cat	Rainbow speed, wave effect, FPS
About	Version and links

System settings are also available via right-click → Configure Task Manager Colors.

Building

bash scripts/build-plasmoid.sh

Produces com.comexpertise.plasma.taskmanagercolors-<version>.plasmoid ready for distribution.

Development

Requirements

• KDE Plasma 6
• kpackagetool6
• gettext (for translations)

Translations

bash translate/merge.sh   # extract strings → update .po files
bash translate/build.sh   # compile .po → .mo

License

© 2026 ComExpertise — GPL-2.0-or-later — see individual file headers for details.

Author

David DIVERRES — ComExpertise