Plasma Taskbar Sync

Keep pinned apps and their order the same across KDE Plasma taskbars.

The service watches Plasma's settings for changes. Pin, unpin, or move an app on one display and your changes will be copied to other displays within about two seconds.

Install

git clone https://github.com/SleepyStew/plasma-taskbar-sync.git \
&& cd plasma-taskbar-sync \
&& ./install.sh

The installer builds a Python zipapp from the cloned source. It has no external dependencies.

It installs two files:

• ~/.local/bin/plasma-taskbar-sync
• ~/.local/share/systemd/user/plasma-taskbar-sync.service

It then enables and starts the systemd user service. No root access is needed. Upgrades remove the old unit automatically.

Check the setup:

plasma-taskbar-sync status

Background

I was searching through Plasma's settings desperately trying to find a way to put the taskbar on all of my monitors. With no luck, I did some research and after much frustrated googling, I discovered Plasma does not currently support having a synced taskbar across monitors, so I made it myself.

Requirements

• KDE Plasma 6
• Two or more displays with a standard Task Manager or Icons-only Task Manager
• Python 3.10 or newer
• Qt 6 qdbus, named qdbus6 or qdbus-qt6
• KDE's kbuildsycoca6 tool
• Git, install, and mktemp
• Linux with inotify
• A systemd user session for automatic startup

These dependencies come pre-installed on most Plasma distros.

Commands

plasma-taskbar-sync doctor
plasma-taskbar-sync status [--json]
plasma-taskbar-sync once [--dry-run]
plasma-taskbar-sync watch [--fallback-interval SECONDS]
plasma-taskbar-sync self-test

• doctor prints full setup, service, Plasma, and taskbar details.
• status reports whether the taskbars match and the service is running.
• once runs one sync and exits.
• watch reacts to taskbar changes until stopped.
• self-test tests pinning, order, and an empty list against live taskbars.

The self-test changes one taskbar, checks that the change reaches all taskbars, then restores each taskbar and the prior state file.

Update

From the cloned project:

git pull --ff-only && ./install.sh

The installer replaces the executable and service file, restarts the service, and keeps the saved sync state.

How it works

The watcher listens for changes to Plasma's applet settings, waits half a second for each edit to finish, then reads the launchers setting from every supported task manager and compares it with the last saved value. It also runs a safety check every 60 seconds.

If inotify is not available, the service checks every two seconds and tries to restore the event watch once a minute.

• One changed taskbar wins.
• Several taskbars with the same change win together.
• If taskbars have different changes, screen 0 wins.
• If screen 0 has no task manager, the first task manager wins.

Plasma stores launcher settings separately from the task manager's live view. After a write, the app runs kbuildsycoca6 --noincremental. The cache event prompts Plasma to redraw the launcher list at once. This runs only after a real change, not on every check.

Files and saved state

The app stores its state and process lock in:

~/.local/state/plasma-taskbar-sync/

Troubleshooting

Check taskbar and service health:

plasma-taskbar-sync status

Print full diagnostic information:

plasma-taskbar-sync doctor

doctor includes command paths, versions, file paths, service state, widget IDs, plugin names, config-key state, and launcher lists.

Check the service and recent logs:

systemctl --user status plasma-taskbar-sync.service
journalctl --user -u plasma-taskbar-sync.service -n 100

The watcher stays quiet when nothing changes. It logs writes, conflicts, errors, and event-watch failures.

Uninstall

From the cloned project:

./uninstall.sh

This stops and disables the service, then removes the executable, service file, process lock, and saved state. It does not change the current taskbars. It also removes the old service path used by earlier versions.

The script does not remove a custom file passed through --state-file.

Development

Run all local checks:

./check.sh

This runs the Python tests, checks every shell script, tests install and uninstall in temporary user directories, builds a temporary zipapp, and checks the systemd unit when the host allows it.

See CONTRIBUTING for more information.

License

Licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. See LICENSE.