Are Different Wallpaper and Different Icons on each Activity possible?
This was once achievable though Virtual Desktops, but this functionality has been removed in Plasma 5.
I have tried to get this to work using Activities but it does not seem possible.
Could anyone point me in the right direction to get this to work properly?

Thanks!

I am running Plasma 5.15.0 on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

Yes, you change the wallpaper the same way you do as usual : right click the desktop in that Activity. This never went away.
I have a number of them, all using different wallpapers, as well as different desktop widgets and and desktop icons (on only one, I don't usually like those on my desktop layouts)

@claydoh: Thanks for your response!
I do have different wallpapers but I could never get the icons to work on the different desktops.
They seem to only work on the original desktop activity. I must be doing something wrong...

For some reason, the Activity Desktop profile is set to Folder Layout by default.

Right-click your desktop, click Configure Desktop, and under Layout, select Desktop.

You will have to do this with each Activity, unless you want a couple to have the same icon set.

@dngrsone Thanks for replying!

I tried switching to the Desktop Containment view, but it doesn't work for me.
I do actually want the Desktop set to Folder View.
In Folder View, I am able create URL shortcuts on the desktop and launch them.
This however does not seem to work on any Activity linked to a folder other than the "Desktop" folder.
Linking an Activity to any other folder (e.g. Desktop2) leaves me with Icons that don't work.
Linking ALL Activities to the "Desktop" folder leaves me with all Activities having the same Icons... but at least they work.
I have tried linking a Folder Widget on a Desktop Containment view to my "Desktop2" folder but the Icons do not work there either.
Until the recent update from 5.14.5 to 5.15.0 I was at least able to right click on these Icons and choose "Open" which would get them to work.
The "Open" option however is no longer listed in the menu when I "right click" on the Icon in Plasma 5.15.0.

Thanks again for your reply!

Sooo… To get around this issue I had to abandon the notion of assigning each Activity to their own custom location. My solution is sub-par at best, but it does give me back different icons and links on each Activity.

The first thing I did was to “Right click” the first Activity desktop and select “Configure Desktop”. From the Desktop Folder Settings I chose “Location” and switched from Show “Custom location” to Show “Desktop folder”. I repeated this action on all my Activities until they all showed the “Desktop folder” and thus the same Icons. Next, I moved all the Icons I was using from the previously used “Custom locations” to the Desktop folder. Once this was done, I renamed everything! All Icons (Folders, Program Links, and URL Links) one by one were renamed by adding either a -1, -2, -3, or -4 to their names. I then went back to my first desktop Activity, selected “Configure Desktop”, and from the Desktop Folder Settings chose “Filter”. From the Filter screen I chose “Show Files Matching” File name pattern: “*-1” My first Activity then displayed only the Icons I wanted on it and all URL Links worked once again! I then performed the same action for the rest of my four Activities.

This workaround really is sub-par as all the Icons on my first Activity have a -1 in their name along with a -2 for my second Activity’s Icons and so on… but it does get the job done.

I hope this helps someone until the issue is properly resolved.

Also, a big thanks to everyone that responded and tried to help. Your input was greatly appreciated!

You might also try using the "Show files linked to the current activity" setting. Files can be associated with activities (from dolphin or plasma folder views) by right-clicking on them and using the Activities submenu.
(you can also review the file-activity associations by navigating to activities:/ in dolphin)

Try this:
In the Desktop folder, create a folder for each activity. Next in the configure desktop settings under location point custom location to the activity folder. Then go to each activity and create links to the apps, folders, file or URL's that you want to see on that activities desktop.
Hope this helps.

Thank you, thank you bodidharma! I registered just to be able to post my appreciation. I'm so glad you posted this even though the thread was old.

I've been going nuts because the only way I found to have separate icons on different activities was to use desktop mode. But then, dragging icons was annoying, but the real killer was that there seemed to be no way to switch from single click to double click for launching. I was getting sick of closing the superfluous instances when I (frequently) forgot.

Some additional tips:
When using this method some additional steps are probably necessary. Newly added applications will usually be named with a following ".desktop" They must be renamed by right clicking and selecting "Rename...". For some mysterious reason, when adding apps some of them will disappear from the desktop. To Get them back, switch to desktop mode then back to folder mode. This will, however, lose the icon positions.