Hi,
I do apologize if this has been asked before but I was just wondering if plasma 5 allows to assign a virtual desktops to separate screens like some of the window managers.
I am a complete linux newbie and tried some window managers before settling on plasma this seems to be the only feature that I kind of miss.
I am not from a computer science background so I do apologize again if I am missing any critical information I need to provide with this thread. Happy to add later if and as required.
Thanks

Hi!

The „native“ way would be using activities and switching between them. You can set up every application to be on every activity, or choose some with right clicking the window bar and choose More Actions → Configure Special Application Settings, which will lead you to systemsettings5 → Window Management → Window Rules.

To only use virtual desktops (which are available in all activities) you can use the More Actions → Configure Special Window Settings and add a Property for the virtual desktop.

Another way would be to use a tiling window manager to have better control of the display space usage. There are scripts for KWin too, but I didn't use them much as I prefer other concepts for tiling. If you want to try them, open systemsettings5 → Window Management → KWin Scripts → Get New Scripts… and search for „tiling“.

Thanks guys, appreciate the responses but i still don't think it fits my use case. When i choose a virtual desktop or activity it changes the space in all the monitors. What i originally wanted was to assign virtual desktops to each monitor (so when i select a desktop it switches the space only on that monitor). I am able to do with other WMs. I guess this feature will have to be request to the dev .

You can try one of the available tiling scripts for KWin. This behaviour is „normal“ for tiling wms like dwm, sway, etc.

I have the same question. I would like to have my main monitor on one desktop while my secondary monitor is on a different desktop. I really do not want to setup activities to accomplish this. The reason I would like this is I have a program that is always refreshing by design and if I have it open on it's desktop on the main monitor every time it refreshes I get taken to it's desktop and away from the desktop I'm currently working in. I know I can disable focus stealing but I really don't want to. Any chance that this is possible now? Thanks

hi:
I have same problem so I find this topic too ^_^. It can't separate directly but I find new way to instead.
systemsettings5 → Window Management → KWin Scripts → Get New Scripts and search "Virtual Desktops Only On Primary"
I think this plugin would help !

At last , I still hope separate monitors directly. Is there any better idea?

For the simple use case of having a specific app always open on monitor 2 and use different virtual desktops on monitor 1, you can just set the window as sticky.
This will put it on all virtual desktops at the same time, and since it is on the second monitor it should not get in the way.

The special case of the "refreshing" app to me sounds like a broken app, since an app "refreshing" (or even re-opening) itself should not change the virtual desktop.