One of the KDE Plasma features I use almost in daily basis is the MouseMark.
Go to your settings, in Desktop Effects, Enable the MouseMark (you can change the settings of it in the button in front of it). Then press Meta+Shift and move your mouse to doodle, or press and release Meta+Shift+Ctrl to define beginning and end of an arrow (it will draw the rest.
Interestingly enough, it have been in Plasma for the past 16 years:
https://github.com/KDE/kde-workspace/tree/master/kwin/effects/mousemark
@Mehrad @[email protected] @[email protected]
Kde is truly matured
I mean kde , not just plasma!
The whole kdeI’ve been using plasma for over 6 years now and I’m just now finding out about this feature.
Can you also send images of you using it? Not that I didn’t believe it but I want to see how other people have been using it
I found a video on Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/s/JHsMHtz9PF
@Mehrad @[email protected] @[email protected] Can’t you just do that with a screenshot utility like Flameshot?
@Lenni
You can, and also @flameshot provides more tools and colors, but it is a “still frame” because Flameshot captures the screenshot first, and then let the user to annotate it. Therefore it is not useful if a video is playing in the background or slides are changing or moving through the code.Side note:: I’m one of the maintainers of Flameshot ;) and I’m glad you have found it handy :ablobcatattention:
Interesting, I think there was a Firefox addon way back that did this and mouse gestures.
What do you use it for?
@Mehrad @[email protected] @[email protected]
Awesome feature, however, the arror part doesn’t work for me. When I press Meta+Shift+Ctrl and move the mouse, it looks like this:
@Larvitz
😅 😂 Yeah, That’s why I explicitly explained the arrow-drawing process in my toot 😉 I also had this problem and figured out how to do it today. The keybinding and behavior for arrows is poorly designed imho and I hope KDE folks improve it.But for now, this is how you should draw an arrow:
- move your mouse where you want the arrow head to be
- press **and release** Meta+Ctrl+Shift
- move your mouse to where the tail should be
- repeat step 2
@Mehrad @[email protected] @[email protected] Doesn’t really work for me. Sometimes, a random arror appears that point nowhere near the mouse cursor position and most of the times, just nothing happens. 🙁
@Larvitz
Basically this is the chuck of code responsible which is how I figured out how to draw an arrow:I also don’t see any part in the code that can throw the error. Considering that this is such a simple code and have not changed for about a decade, I don’t think the issue is wayland/x11 either.
I suggest filing a bug report with the screenshot of the error and etc.:
https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=mousemark&list_id=2631036
@Larvitz
It seems the Github mirror is way out of date. I checked the https://invent.kde.org (the KDE’s Gitlab instance) and found out that during the past 6 months MouseMark has received some updates, especially about the logic of arrow drawing:https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/commit/46807b1a72f1d760b52b92a574face4a7a509a39
But as far as I can tell, even if you have the latest build from the latest source code, the general process of drawing is the same:
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/blob/master/src/plugins/mousemark/mousemark.cpp#L178-192
@Mehrad @[email protected] @[email protected] On my Desktop computer, running Arch Linux with Plasma 6.0.0, it works correctly. On my laptop with Fedora 39 and Plasma 5.27.10, it is bugged and doesn’t work properly (Both running under Wayland).
Anyway, a great feature! Thank you very much for pointing it out.
Anyone know how to make it more intuitive? Like, only allow one, use an easier keyboard shortcut to activate?
I couldnt find “autoremove” and how to change the shortcut to activate
@Pantherina I don’t know what you mean by Autoremove, but here are some tips:
Undo the last line by Meta+Shift+F12
Clean everything by Meta+Shift+F11
In the latest version (at least the one that is in KDE’s git repo, users can change all those keybindings. Checkout
mousemark.kcfg
andmousemark\_config.ui
files in this link:https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/commit/46807b1a72f1d760b52b92a574face4a7a509a39
I don’t yet have #Plasma6, so I’m not sure if it is already shipped there or not. But the code is done and it is just the matter of time :)
Thanks!