I am running Xfce 4.12 on Debian 9. I love Xfce and have no intentions of changing desktop environments any time soon. I am quite attached to a setting in "Window Manager Tweaks > Accessibility > Raise windows when any mouse button is pressed." I love this setting because I can bring another window to the foreground just by scrolling a little with my mouse. I am wondering if this same functionality is available or reasonably achievable on any other desktop environment in case I ever decide to try a different one. (My second favorite desktop environment is Mate.) I am not interested in raising the window just by moving the mouse over it. You may be wondering why I would not just click on the window. Doing a quick scroll over the window avoids having to move the mouse to the top bar to click. Thank you.
1 Answer
KDE has the feature to raise window by scroll like Xfce.
The feature is available in KDE Plasma 4 and newer, but not in older KDE. I have clarified that KDE 3 can only raise window by a middle click, whilst KDE Plasma 4 and Plasma 5 can additionally raise window by scroll. Note the difference as follows.
- 'Middle click' refers to the press of mouse wheel button.
- 'Scroll' refers to the turning of mouse wheel itself.
In other words, the same mouse button can do two different actions.
Setup instruction for KDE
In KDE Plasma 4:
- Go to System Settings.
- Under Workspace Appearance and Behavior, select Window Behavior.
- In left tile menu, select Window Behavior.
- In right tabbed menu, select the tab Window Actions.
- Under 'Inactive Inner Window', look for the option 'Wheel'.
- In the dropdown menu, change the option to Activate, Raise & Scroll.
- Finally, click Apply.
In KDE Plasma 5:
- Follow the same steps as KDE Plasma 4;
- Except for step 2: Under Workspace, select Window Management.
When following the steps, inline text in bold requires user interaction.
Feature availability
Tested the behavior in KDE 3 on legacy Knoppix and Slax (mentioned as a possible hint for TDE, the fork of KDE 3.5), KDE Plasma 4.13 on Kubuntu 14.04, KDE Plasma 5.12 on Kubuntu 18.04. KDE Plasma 4 is either available until 2019 via Kubuntu 14.04, or available indeterminately up to Debian 9 (stretch). Else KDE Plasma 5.12 or newer may be suggested.
MATE seems to lack of full documentation and I can not download immediately for testing. I would assume things have not much changed from GNOME 2: Probably not available (yet).
Besides Xfce and KDE, I am not aware of others.
- 1Nice thorough answer. I confirmed in Kubuntu 18.04 on VirtualBox. I had looked at Linux Mint 18.3 Mate and did not find the setting. Thanks!jbrock– jbrock2018-06-11 22:33:26 +00:00Commented Jun 11, 2018 at 22:33
- I recently looked at Ubuntu MATE 18.04 (MATE 1.20) and similarly, no such setting. Window selection is limited to mouse over, with or without interval.user125388– user1253882019-02-16 14:13:04 +00:00Commented Feb 16, 2019 at 14:13