kde-plasmoid-dev

KDE Plasma 6 Plasmoid Development

Plasmoids are QML applications loaded by the Plasma 6 shell. A plasmoid is a directory with a metadata.json and a contents/ui/main.qml, packaged and installed via kpackagetool6.

Ground in current docs first

Plasma APIs and packaging conventions change between minor releases. Always fetch the current canonical docs before scaffolding or debugging — do not rely on the inline summary below as the source of truth. Fetch the relevant pages with WebFetch (or the user's preferred docs tool) and use them as the authority.

Authoritative references (Plasma 6):

• Widget development index — https://develop.kde.org/docs/plasma/widget/
• Getting started / first widget tutorial — https://develop.kde.org/docs/plasma/widget/tutorial/
• metadata.json properties reference — https://develop.kde.org/docs/plasma/widget/properties/
• Configuration (KConfigXT + config.qml) — https://develop.kde.org/docs/plasma/widget/configuration/
• Translation / i18n — https://develop.kde.org/docs/plasma/widget/translations-i18n/
• Plasma 5 → 6 porting guide — https://develop.kde.org/docs/plasma/widget/porting-plasma6/
• Examples (official plasma-sdk examples repo) — https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-sdk
• Plasma framework API — https://api.kde.org/frameworks/plasma-framework/html/
• Kirigami components — https://develop.kde.org/docs/getting-started/kirigami/
• Community Developer Guide (note: largely Plasma 5 era — useful for context, not authoritative for P6) — https://community.kde.org/Plasma/DeveloperGuide

When the user asks for an API, schema field, or import path, fetch the relevant URL above rather than guessing.

Basic conventions (Plasma 6)

These hold at the time of writing — verify against the docs above for any project that ships.

Directory layout

my-plasmoid/
├── metadata.json
└── contents/
    ├── ui/
    │   ├── main.qml                  # required — root must be PlasmoidItem
    │   ├── CompactRepresentation.qml # optional — panel / collapsed view
    │   └── FullRepresentation.qml    # optional — popup / expanded view
    ├── config/
    │   ├── main.xml                  # KConfigXT schema
    │   └── config.qml                # ConfigModel of pages
    └── icon.svg                      # optional, if not using a theme icon