System Settings

The new control center for KDE software and workspaces

Feature Overview

• Control Center for global KDE platform settings
• Customize and manage your desktop in one convenient location
• General and Advanced tabs separate most common user settings
• Search function helps narrow down probable settings

System Settings is a program where you can configure many parts of your desktop. Color, style, shortcuts and many other things. It takes the place of KDE3's KControl. It has two main tabs: General tab for the most common user settings, and Advanced tab for more refined system administration. Each tab is further broken down into groups of related settings.

Search

System Settings has a search function to help in hunting down a setting. Simply type in a keyword in the Search field in the toolbar and System Settings will display modules that contain the keyword and hide those that don't.

Searching for "key"

Note that System Settings will not indicate if there are hits in both General and Advanced tabs, so you'll have to check them yourself. If you can't find a setting that used to be in KDE 3's KControl, it is likely that it has been moved to the Settings section of the application concerned.

You will find the System Settings Handbook here.

Mouse Gestures:

KDE version 4.4.4

The place where you start is "System Settings -> Input Actions"

Enabling mouse gestures

In the bottom left corner of the window there is a "Settings" button. make sure that the "Gestures" checkbox is checked. Set the timout as you see fit. The mouse button might be different for you, I chose 3 for using the right mouse button. If you want input actions to be enabled automatically, check the "Start the input Actions daemon on login" above.

Creating the Mouse gestures actions group

Right click on the left pane (in an empty area under the list of action groups) and choose "New Group", rename that group to "Mouse Gestures" and check the checkbox attached to its name.

Creating a new mouse gesture:

From now on I will assume that the new group is called "Mouse Gestures". Right click on "Mouse Gestures" and choose "New"->"Mouse Gesture Action" (here there are three options but I didn't manage to work with "Send Keyboard Input") using "Command/URL" or "D-Bus Command" you will need to create a gesture and bind an action to it.

To create the gesture:

click on your "New Action" and select the "Trigger" tab. in the bottom of the screen there is an "Edit" button (click it) in the box that just opened draw your gesture using the left mouse button.

To bind an action

if you chose "Command/URL" simply enter that command/url under the "Action" tab at the "Command/URL" field.

if you chose D-Bus, here are few examples.

Examples using D-Bus:

Finding out what to fill where, is done with the help of the "Launch D-Bus Browser", using that browser you can find what method you wish to call in what application object. using D-Bus we need to fill some fields, the field name will be regular and the content italic.

Runner:

this will display the Runner dialog.

Remote Application: org.kde.krunner

Remote Object: /App

Function: org.kde.krunner.App.display

Audacious next/previous/pause/play/stop/repeat track:

Remote Application: org.mpris.audacious

Remote Object: /Player

Function: org.freedesktop.MediaPlayer.Next (replace Next with Prev/Pause/Stop/Play/Repeat)

Audacious PlayPause track:

If not playing will play, if playing will pause.

Remote Application: org.mpris.audacious

Remote Object: /org/atheme/audacious

Function: org.atheme.audacious.PlayPause

Klipper manually invoke action menu:

display the actions pop-up. (I am using that to search and translate words)

Remote Application: org.kde.klipper

Remote Object: /klipper

Function: org.kde.klipper.klipper.showKlipperManuallyInvokeActionMenu

Keywords

System settings, control center, configuration, configure, customize, administration