Streamline Plasma with Activities to be more focused and productive

Have you seen Activities in your system settings and wondered what they're used for? Have you read about them them in a blog post and wanted to know more? Have you been interested in giving them a try, but weren't sure where to start? This is where I was once upon a time, so I'd like to share how I've set up Activities to streamline my workflows. Maybe this can help others who also want to experiment. The experience hasn't always been smooth. Due to various bugs, there was one point where I threw up my hands and migrated everything back to virtual desktops in anger. Eventually, the bugs were fixed, and other improvements were made. I gave them another try and I'm glad I did. Many thanks to the contributors who fixed those bugs and who maintain this awesome feature! Today, Activities are now an integral part of my Plasma setup.

Activities? But I already have Virtual Desktops!

When I first discovered this "Activities" thing, I had no idea what it was, really. I was already using Virtual Desktops, what did Activities do that they couldn't? It wasn't until I found a few blog posts explaining the fundamentals that I got it. Activities are meant for different workflows a.k.a. contexts (not just tasks within one). At the most basic level:

Virtual Desktops, a.k.a. Workspaces, separate different tasks within a context / workflow / project. For instance, when doing KDE work, I might have the bug tracker and docs opened in a browser on Workspace1, and then on Workspace2 have a terminal and code editor. These are things related to the context of "KDE work".

Activities are meant for a higher level of separation based on a particular workflow or project. Some examples would be Work, Finances, Gaming, Development or Streaming. They can be added, changed and deleted in Settings -> Activities or in the Activities Manager (Meta+Q by default).

Benefits for organization and speeding up getting into a workflow

Each Activity can have a set of applications, widgets and linked files. You can tailor these to a workflow / context / project. You can quickly switch between them with keyboard shortcuts or the Activities Manager.

For me, they make it much easier to launch the tools I need, and maintain focus on the task at hand. My brain is context-driven, so this helps me keep track of where things are and avoid getting lost in a sea of stuff. My brain is also sometimes easily distracted. Having only the shortcuts and applications I need front of me helps me maintain focus.

So what can I actually do with Activities that I can't already do with Virtual Desktops?

Most folks already know that with Virtual Desktops, you can place different windows on specific or all desktops (Wayland has more flexibility than X11 here). Of course, this can be used to separate workflows, and there are plenty of people using them this way. That's the beauty of Plasma, you can make it fit your individual needs. Here are some things Activities allows for that Virtual Desktops do not.

Starting with the System Settings - Activities page, you can choose to enable or disable, for each:

• Track file and app usage (disable for privacy, on a Financial Activity, for example)
• Automatically turn the screen off (disable when gaming, presenting, streaming, etc.)
• Automatically shut down or sleep the system (disable when gaming, presenting, streaming etc.)

Then, for these features, you can choose one Activity, multiple, or all.

• Place different application windows (ex: your code editor on a Programming Activity) by launching it in that activity.
• Pin an application to the task manager or in Favorites in the app menu (ex: your accounting software on a Financial Activity)
• Desktop icons can be associated per Activity (Go to Settings -> Wallpaper -> Location and select "Files linked to current activity". This can be set per activity!)
• Open an app in an activity (ex: opening your accounting software only on a Financial Activity, or a media player in all) with window rules

Additionally, for each Activity, you can have different wallpapers and widgets per Activity. This allows me to see, at a glance, which Activity is active and easily launch things.

Use cases

Here are some ways you can use Activities, and how I've found them helpful.

• Separate your work stuff from your personal stuff Since I work from home, this helps me shift from my "at work" mindset to "at home". I much prefer this to relying on the old 45 minute commute ;)
• Keep focus on the current task and context
  I can avoid being distracted by stuff not related to what I'm doing at the moment by keeping things separated. While working on KDE bug triage, for instance, I won't be distracted by stuff that's not related. As much. Squirrel.
• Keep sensitive information from being accidentally displayed until you want it to be One day, at a coffee shop, I realized that I didn't want people around me to necessarily see shortcuts like "Budget". I created a Financial Activity to keep sensitive information related to financial stuff hidden unless specifically switching to it.
• A sparse Activity for presentations / recording / streaming
  It could have nothing shown outside of the specific needs for that context. This not only avoids showing things to strangers you would prefer not to, it keeps your environment looking tailored.

How I organize my stuff by context

I have five Activities. All except the first one are configured to only show files related to the activity on the desktop.

Things common to all via pinned task manager icons:

• Kate session chooser
• Note widgets

Favorites and Quick Launch widgets per Activity:

1. Personal - All the stuff that isn't specific to anything else (general browsing, emails, etc).
   No specific shortcuts, just a Weather widget on the desktop for my home city.
2. KDE - Where I focus on bug related work, MR testing, and such.
   Favorites include a KDE Obsidian vault, Firefox KDE profile and a Discord client.
3. Solus - Volunteer work for packaging and distro coordination.
   Favorites: Solus Obsidian vault and Vivaldi (it works better with Jitsi Meet than Firefox).
4. Financial - Budgeting, accounting, etc.
   Favorites: an Obsidian vault and KMyMoney. There's a QuickLaunch widget containing links to a few folders, documents and spreadsheets.
5. Conference - Conference tasks and notes. Favorites: (you guessed it) a Travel Obsidian Vault. Weather widget set to the city I'll be in.
   If speaking, I might have shortcuts to relevant documents and presentations.

Ramping up a workflow using the KDE Activity

To briefly illustrate efficiently getting into a workflow, I'll describe using my KDE Activity. It's based on my multi-screen setup at home. When I'm traveling and only have a single laptop display, applications are spread out across different Virtual Desktops as well.

• Thunderbird email and Nheko chat have automatically started at login (through Session Saving). Using kwin window rules, they run on all Activities.
• I open a music app via a Favorite (pinned on all Activities) and start playing music, which helps me focus. It has window rules to display on all Activities, so I can control it from wherever.
• Then I launch applications from Favorites that are only on this Activity:
  • A Discord client for work chat
  • An Obsidian Notes vault for KDE (kwin rules also set position and size)
  • Firefox with my KDE profile. It has specific bookmarks, as well as tabs for a time tracker, the KDE bug tracker, Invent, specific bugs and merge requests I need to test etc.

And now I'm ready to start working.

Going further - Combining Virtual Desktops and Activities

As I mentioned above, sometimes I also use Virtual Desktops to segregate different tasks per context. For instance, in my KDE Activity, I might have VDs for: Communication - email, chat Development - terminal, code editor Documentation - browser, notes app

Wrapping up

These are some ways you can customize Activities. Hopefully, you can see how they might streamline your own desktop and help your workflows be more efficient.

Technical notes - making shortcuts for specific Firefox profiles and Obsidian vaults

Firefox

Open Firefox with firefox -p to gain access to the profile picker. Use one of the profile names in your shortcut. In the menu editor, for example, after copying and pasting the default entry, change the Arguments:

%u -p profile_name

Obsidian

To create a shortcut to an Obsidian Notes vault, I copied the default .desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications/ and changed it to load the vault by name:

Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=obsidian.sh --file-forwarding md.obsidian.Obsidian @@u %u @@ 'obsidian://open?vault=vaultname'

Then, I customized the icon through the Menu Editor.

To find the location of the default .desktop file on your system:

1. Find Obsidian Notes in the application menu
2. Right click, and click Edit Application
3. Right click the entry in the Menu Editor and click "Open Containing Folder"