Most of us know that when it comes to raw customisation potential you can’t beat the KDE Plasma desktop.
Whatever you want to do chances are KDE Plasma has a setting, switch, or a toggle for it (and if it doesn’t someone in the community has likely created one).
This is as true for aesthetics as it is core functionality.
This week the desktop picked up a new “auto accent” colour feature that’ll ship as part of the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.25 release — and it bolsters this desktop’s burgeoning beautification credentials.
Android and its Material You aesthetic uses dynamic colour to accentuate the user interface (and certain apps) that’s derived from a phone’s wallpaper image. It’s a small-sounding feature that has a big impact on the system, helping it feel more personal, more expressive, and more unique.
KDE Plasma 5.25 offers something similar:
Ubuntu 22.04 features include a set of 10 accent colours. But if, like me, you have a hard time decided on an accent colour — they can make some apps look strange, clash with your background wallpaper, alter the vibe of your set-up — having it auto-generated (like back in the ol’ chameleonic Unity days) is a pretty great alternative.
This is an optional setting, so you needn’t worry about your desktop dramatically altering every time you change your wallpaper. Plus, if the auto-generated colour from a wallpaper you want to keep is out of vogue you can override it by picking a different hue from the predefined colour palette, adding a ‘custom colour’ of your exact choosing, or defaulting to the default accent of whatever “look” you’re using.
Auto-generated accent colour from wallpaper is on course to be included in KDE Plasma 5.25, which is due for release in a couple of months.