Latte Dock
Version: 0.10 Web: https://invent.kde. org/plasma/latte-dock
This all began with envy of the catchy parabolic zoom effect that was first implemented in the Apple OS X dock. Although we have several implementations of that eye candy for Linux these days, it is Latte Dock that became the most mature and advanced dock panel.
The reality is that it’s already much more than a dock; it is a complex and versatile system for creating and managing custom panels of very different sorts and types. More than that, the fresh Latte Dock 0.10 release is no longer KDE-only software, as it boasts a desktopagnostic widget explorer and happily runs anywhere outside of KDE Plasma without issues.
Latte Dock particularly shines with desktop customisation. The application enables setting both MacOS-like docks and classic panels, place it along any screen edge, add any combination of widgets and adjust their placement with paddings and spacers. It takes very little time to mimic the Ubuntu layout with its vertical left-side panel, or set up macOS Big Sur’s recognisable floating dock that seems to be slightly pulled off from the screen edge, or copy the new Windows 11 bottom panel with centered icons, and so on… There is really a lot of room for creativity!
Latte Dock provides a parallel system of desktop panels in KDE Plasma, which means that you can impose a Latte panel over the traditional Plasma panel. For instance, you can fill the convenient Plasma panel with the Panon widget (LXF276) and then run a semi-transparent and blurred Latte panel above it for the sake of pulsating panel effect.
The new Latte 0.10 has some cool improvements and lets you place several panels along the same screen edge, play with new hiding options, backgrounds, panel corner rounding, better move and align widgets and plenty of more advanced customisation tricks. By the way, it still zooms the dock icons very smoothly. Don’t miss it!