PlasmaZones

Window snapping, tiling and scrolling for KDE Plasma

Three placement modes in one daemon. Snap windows into zones you drew, let an algorithm tile them for you, or scroll them along an endless strip. Every monitor picks its own.

Docs and screenshots: phosphor-works.github.io/plasmazones

Questions, ideas or bug reports: join the Discord

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Three Placement Modes

Each monitor runs one mode, chosen per virtual desktop and per activity, so a widescreen can scroll while the laptop panel tiles. Meta+Shift+T cycles the focused screen through the enabled modes, and any mode can be turned off entirely.

Snapping

Hold Alt (or your configured modifier) while dragging a window. The zones light up. Drop the window into one and it resizes to fill that zone.

Zones are named regions you draw yourself, in a visual editor with drag-to-resize, snap-to-grid, and mirroring. A library of layouts ships built in (grids, BSP, master and stack, fibonacci, plus portrait, ultrawide, and super-ultrawide variants), and after a snap the remaining zones show as thumbnails so the next window is one click away. Zones can span, and keyboard users can skip the drag entirely with Meta+Ctrl+1 through Meta+Ctrl+9.

Layouts gallery → · Coming from FancyZones →

Tiling

Windows place themselves as they open, with no drag and no zones to draw. The bundled algorithms are written in Luau and run in a sandbox, covering the usual master-and-stack, BSP, columns, grid, spiral, and monocle families along with less common ones. Write your own in the same language and the daemon hot-reloads it from disk while you edit.

Autotile gallery → · Authoring guide →

Scrolling

Modeled on the niri compositor. Windows form columns on an endless strip and the screen is a window onto it, so opening a window never resizes the ones you already have. The strip slides them aside and scrolls the view instead.

Columns cycle through width presets or take any width you give them. Windows inside a column share it or show one at a time as tabs, with a configurable indicator alongside. A window can be consumed into its neighbor's column or expelled into its own, columns center on demand, and the strip runs side to side or top to bottom to match the shape of the monitor. Hold Meta and scroll the wheel to move along it. Templates set the starting columns and the presets each screen cycles through.

A shortcut family on Meta+Alt covers the whole vocabulary: Keyboard shortcuts →

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Beyond Placement

• Appearance — GLSL shader overlays for zones (audio-reactive, procedural, distro-themed) with up to 4 image textures each, window decoration packs, and animation packs for open, close, minimize, and desktop switching — Shader gallery → · authoring guide →
• Per-monitor, per-desktop, per-activity — layouts, algorithms, templates, and mode assignments are all scoped, and virtual screens subdivide a physical monitor into independent logical workspaces with their own everything
• Window rules — match on class, title, active layout, screen orientation, and more, then act on placement, floating, opacity, borders, animations, scroll speed, and per-app behavior in every mode
• Scriptable — a D-Bus API on org.plasmazones covering every mode — scripting guide →

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Install

Arch (AUR, prebuilt):

yay -S plasmazones-bin

Fedora (COPR):

sudo dnf copr enable fuddlesworth/PlasmaZones && sudo dnf install plasmazones

Debian testing/unstable (apt):

sudo curl -fsSL https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:fuddlesworth/Debian_Unstable/Release.key -o /etc/apt/keyrings/plasmazones.asc
echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/plasmazones.asc] https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/fuddlesworth/Debian_Unstable/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plasmazones.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install plasmazones

signed-by scopes the key to this repository, so it cannot sign anything from the Debian archive itself. apt reads the armored key as it comes, so there is no gpg --dearmor step and nothing to install first. The two URL spellings are both correct: the repository line uses home:/fuddlesworth/ and the key uses home:fuddlesworth/, which is how OBS lays them out.

On Debian testing, swap Debian_Unstable for Debian_Testing in both lines. Packages are built for x86_64 only. The same repository works on Debian-derived rolling distributions such as PikaOS.

openSUSE Tumbleweed, a portable tarball for Fedora Atomic / no-root setups, and source-build instructions (including the -DUSE_KDE_FRAMEWORKS=OFF portable build): Install page →.

After install, enable the daemon:

systemctl --user enable --now plasmazones.service
kbuildsycoca6 --noincremental    # KDE only — refresh the service cache

Requirements: KDE Plasma 6.7+ on Wayland — the integration runs as a KWin effect, and KWin must be compositing with OpenGL — plus Qt 6.10+, CMake 3.16+, and a C++20 compiler. Kirigami is required for the settings app in every build. Optional: the rest of KDE Frameworks 6.26+ for the settings KCM and KGlobalAccel shortcuts, PlasmaActivities for activity-based layouts. The portable build (-DUSE_KDE_FRAMEWORKS=OFF) drops those optional framework deps.

Nix / NixOS

NixOS (recommended)

Add to your flake inputs:

plasmazones.url = "github:fuddlesworth/PlasmaZones";

Import the module and enable it in your NixOS configuration:

imports = [ inputs.plasmazones.nixosModules.default ];
programs.plasmazones.enable = true;

After rebuilding, enable the daemon and refresh KDE:

systemctl --user enable --now plasmazones.service
kbuildsycoca6 --noincremental

Then log out and back in.

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Nix profile (without NixOS)

nix profile install github:fuddlesworth/PlasmaZones

Note: This pins the package to the flake's nixpkgs. If your system's KWin updates, the effect plugin may stop loading until you reinstall. The NixOS module method above avoids this by always building against your system's KWin.

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Quick Start

1. Enable the daemon: systemctl --user enable --now plasmazones.service
2. Open the settings app: plasmazones-settings (or System Settings → Apps → PlasmaZones on KDE)
3. Check that the effect is ticked in System Settings → Window Management → Desktop Effects → PlasmaZones. It is enabled by default, so this is usually just a confirmation. PlasmaZones runs as a KWin effect and needs KWin on OpenGL compositing, so the entry is unavailable under QPainter compositing.
4. Drag any window while holding Alt — zones appear, drop to snap.
5. To try the other modes, open Overview in the settings app and assign Tiling or Scrolling to a screen, or press Meta+Shift+T to cycle the focused one through the enabled modes.

Full first-run tour: Getting started →.

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Shortcuts

Action	Default
Open editor	Meta+Shift+E
Open settings	Meta+Shift+P
Cycle placement mode (snapping / tiling / scrolling)	Meta+Shift+T
Toggle floating	Meta+F
Restore window size	Meta+Alt+Escape
Snapping: snap window to zone 1–9	Meta+Ctrl+1 … Meta+Ctrl+9
Previous / next layout	Meta+Alt+[ / Meta+Alt+]
Open layout picker	Meta+Alt+Space
Scrolling: consume / expel window	Meta+Alt+I / Meta+Alt+Shift+I
Scrolling: cycle column width forward / back	Meta+Alt+PgUp / Meta+Alt+PgDown
Scrolling: windowed fullscreen	Meta+Alt+Shift+F
Open shortcut cheatsheet	Meta+Alt+/

Full reference, across core actions, zone movement, snap, layouts, autotile, scrolling, virtual screens, and the editor: Keyboard shortcuts →.

All bindings are rebindable in System Settings → Shortcuts → PlasmaZones (KDE). The PlasmaZones settings app rebinds only the layout editor's own shortcuts.

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Configuration

Settings live in ~/.config/plasmazones/config.json. Layouts live in ~/.local/share/plasmazones/layouts/. Everything is edited through the settings app:

plasmazones-settings                           # overview
plasmazones-settings -p snapping-layouts       # jump straight to the snapping layout library
plasmazones-settings --page tiling-behavior
plasmazones-settings --page scrolling-templates

The app is single-instance — launching it again while running raises the existing window and switches to the requested page.

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Troubleshooting

Daemon startup, verbose logging, KWin minimum-size rules, and the full support-report flow: Troubleshooting →.

Better Blur DX: the force-blur mode blurs every window not on its allowlist, which catches PlasmaZones' overlay surfaces and makes the screen look blurred all the time. To fix it, open System Settings → Window Management → Desktop Effects → Better Blur DX → Configure → Force blur tab, select "Blur all except matching", then add this line:

/^plasmazones/

The slashes are required, they put the parser into regex mode. One entry covers the daemon, editor, and settings. The "Blur all except matching" toggle is the important part. The default mode treats the list as a whitelist instead of an exclusion list.

When filing a bug, attach a support report:

plasmazones-report

The archive lands in /tmp by default with home paths redacted, so it's safe to attach to a public issue.

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D-Bus API

The daemon exposes its whole surface on org.plasmazones for scripting and integration. Interface inventory, scripting recipes, and signal watching: D-Bus scripting guide →.

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Project Structure

Directory tree and data locations: Project Structure on the wiki.

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines on code style, license headers, testing, and translations.

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Support

If PlasmaZones is useful to you, consider supporting development:

• Ko-fi
• GitHub Sponsors

Bug reports and feature requests: GitHub Issues

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License

GPL-3.0-or-later

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Snapping is inspired by FancyZones from PowerToys. Scrolling is inspired by niri.

Built for KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland.