NotAlexNoyleandClaude Fable 5.1
65a3aa4457
The arc radius no longer grows with the number of entries; a short fan is the bottom of the same curve, like the Dock. The lean setting becomes a curve radius in multiples of the icon spacing. The 60° cap only kicks in for very large fans. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Fan Stack
A folder widget for the KDE Plasma 6 panel that fans its newest files out in an arc above the icon, the way a macOS Dock stack does.
Click the icon and the folder's newest entries unroll along a curve, each with a thumbnail (or file type icon) and a label. Click an entry to open it, click the last entry to open the folder itself, click anywhere else (or press Escape) to fold the fan back into the icon.
Features
- Animated fan that unrolls from the panel icon and folds back on close. The whole thing honours the system-wide animation speed setting.
- Newest files first (or any other Folder View sort order), with a "N more…" entry that opens the folder in your file manager.
- Thumbnails for images, PDFs, videos and whatever else your thumbnailers cover, using the same preview plugins as Dolphin.
- Curves to the right, or to the left when the arc would not fit on screen.
- Configurable curve radius, number of entries, icon size, animation length, folder, panel icon, sort order, hidden files.
- Middle-click the panel icon to open the folder. Drop files on it to move them into the folder.
Requirements
- KDE Plasma 6 (developed and tested on 6.7, Wayland).
plasma-desktop(provides the Folder View model the widget reuses),kitemmodels, and Qt 6.5+ (forQtQuick.Effects). All of these are part of a normal Plasma installation.
Install
./install.sh
or, by hand:
kpackagetool6 --type Plasma/Applet --install . # first time
kpackagetool6 --type Plasma/Applet --upgrade . # later versions
Then right-click a panel, choose Add Widgets…, and drag Fan Stack onto the panel. By default it shows your Downloads folder; right-click the icon and choose Configure… to change the folder, icon and the rest.
Settings
| Setting | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Folder | Downloads | Folder to fan out |
| Icon | folder-download |
Icon shown on the panel |
| Files shown in the fan | 8 | Entries before the "N more…" item |
| Fan icon size | 48 px | Icon size inside the fan |
| Curve radius | 13 × icon spacing | Radius of the arc; the curve is the same however many entries there are. Smaller curls over more |
| Fan curves | Away from the screen edge | Force right or left if you prefer |
| Animation length | 350 ms | Scaled by the global animation speed |
| Sort by / Descending / Folders first | Date, descending | Same options as Folder View |
| First file at the top | on | Otherwise the newest file sits nearest the panel |
| Show thumbnails | on | Uses the system preview plugins |
| Show hidden files | off |
Hacking
The widget is plain QML, no build step. After editing an installed copy, reload Plasma's QML without restarting it:
qdbus org.kde.plasmashell /PlasmaShell refreshCurrentShell
For development you can symlink the checkout into place instead of installing it:
ln -s "$PWD" ~/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids/com.notalexnoyle.fanstack
Layout:
contents/ui/main.qml– panel icon, folder model, proxy that trims the listcontents/ui/FanPopup.qml– the frameless popup and the arc geometrycontents/ui/FanItem.qml– one entry: icon, label, open/close animationcontents/ui/configGeneral.qml,contents/config/main.xml– settings
The arc is a circle of fixed radius that leaves the panel icon vertically, so a short fan is just the bottom of the same curve. Only if a very large fan would tilt its top entry past 60° does the radius grow, to keep each label clear of the icon above.
License
GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.