Latte Dock
Version: 0.5.91 Web: http://bit.ly/2mF7YBG
One of the annoying problems of the Plasma 5 desktop is its insufficient number of high quality desktop widgets or plasmoids. The latter term seems to be more correct, as the standard desktop components such as the panel or application menu are also plasmoids – small applications written in Qt’s quick markup language (QML). There are tons of available extra plasmoids at store.kde.org, but still there hasn’t been a decent dock for launching applications and keeping an eye on running tasks. Currently there are two attempts to fill the gap; NowDock and LatteDock, of which the latter, we believe, is the most viable and highquality option.
The idea of the application dock has been around ever since Apple presented OS X in the early 2000s. The bar with large icons occupied the bottom of the screen and could auto- hide in a smart way in order not to waste vertical screen space all the time. It also featured lovely zooming animations that made you want to hover the mouse above the dock all over again. LatteDock is a classic plasmoid with a set of tweaks that make it behave very much like the Apple’s dock. The dock shows icons of currently running apps, but to make the icons stay even after you quit the respective apps, you need to right-click each icon and select the Show Launcher When Not Running option. LatteDock also ships with the encapsulated analogue clock, which brings up the standard Plasma calendar widget once you click it. The great feature of LatteDock is the abundance of available settings (right-click the plasmoid to access it) that include zooming, animations, delays and behaviour. It integrates well with the rest of the desktop, supports Plasma 5 Activities and can show progress information over the icons (eg, file copying). LatteDock is a recommended and full-featured analogue of apps like Docky for the Plasma 5 desktop. You can get it via the default ‘add new stuff’ functionality in Plasma 5 that fetches new plasmoids directly to your desktop.
“The great feature of Latte Dock is its abundance of settings.”