Hi,

I have 4 Activities and dual monitors (twinview). I have an Activity Bar widget with all 4 Activities. When I click an Activity, it can appear on either monitor. I keep clicking activities in the widget until I get the right Activity on the right monitor. There's got to be a better way

My question is, how can I quickly get a specific Activity open on a specific monitor?

Thank you.

Have you tried using the Zoom out feature to choose the activity?

That's weird. I have a similar setup, and here it only changes the activity on the monitor where I have the activity bar. However, if I click on the activity on the other screen (e.g. I have [A][B] and select activity B on the left screen) they swap activity ([B][A]).

bcooksley wrote:Have you tried using the Zoom out feature to choose the activity?

I have used "Zoom Out" to add and change activities. I now realize it can be used to change the activity on both monitors. Silly me.

I thought I had to click the cashew on each display to change the activity displayed on that monitor. If that were the case, I couldn't do it. The cashew on the activity that is on display 2 when I enable Twinview only has "Desktop Settings", and "Add Widgets". The other activities have the full menu. As long as I click the cashew on monitor 1, I can set the activity for display 1 and display 2. I just have to repeat the process for each display. In actuality, I don't change the activities that frequently. I'm still getting my feet wet with KDE 4 features.

This will work. Thank you.

There is one issue with "Zoom Out". I have "Personal Settings -> Window Behavior -> Advanced" set to "Center" (verses the default of Smart). So now, when I click "Zoom Out", the menu (Activity menu?) appears right in the middle of the display (rather than in the upper left-hand corner). The problem is, it's unmovable and covers the "Zoom In" on the first activity. I have to click the icon in the Taskbar to minimize it, or use the cursor/hand to move the activities so I can click the "Zoom In". It would be nice if this menu were movable.

Regarding the Activity Bar, I don't know if it matters, but I added it to a Panel and set the Panel to auto-hide. I now realize I have to duplicate this on each activity to target an activity to a display. I think I'll stick with the "Zoom Out" option.

I've duplicated things in other places, too. I added a Panel to display 2. In that panel I added a Task Manager widget. I set its' option to "Only show tasks from the current desktop". I wanted to add an application to this panel. I tried several ways. I went to KMenu and right-clicked the application, but I couldn't add it to the specific Panel on display 2. A friend suggested adding another Application Launcher Menu widget to the Panel on display 2, use that KMenu, and then remove the KMenu. That worked to add an application to that Panel on display 2, but it was a lot of keystrokes. If there is a better way, I'd be interested.

Thank you.

I've been using activities extensively and I got a couple of tips:

Hotkey each activity with Meta+<key>. Swapping is instant and no UI pops up.

Use few windows per activity. Since you're into this you probably use Alt+Tab and Alt+Shift+Tab to navigate within activity. So instead of cycling 5-10 windows you can cycle 1-2 which makes it determistic which window will be selected by using the shortcut.

Assign applications to Activities. Right-click on the title bar of the program > More actions > Configure special application settings to set which activity a program should open in. Then maybe start a set of them with a single CLI command for a nice "Log in, start stuff, make coffee" routine.

I currently use 4 activities dual screen and 6 on single screen for programming (Email and Slack, code, music, project management software).

Now I'm thinking about going further by always use single screen since moving the mouse and the eyes to a second screen could be unnecessary with this setup.