Shadows for pie menu icons

[Aiz0]

Have you thought about adding shadows to the pie menu icons? I think it would look quite good since it would elevate the icons above the wallpaper.

There are also situations were shadows would help substantially with the visibility of the icons. If someone uses a single color wallpaper and has an app with the same color icon it becomes difficult to see the icon since they blend together.

[markusfisch]

No, I didn't, but I completely understand what you mean!

And it should be possible! The icons would be a bit smaller because the blurred shadow would of course exceed the original size of the icon.

On the other hand, I'm not entirely convinced that this is desirable, as it's quite an edge case, and also because I worry that the shadows will probably clash visually with the fade-in/fade-out animation 🤔 But I guess there's only one way to find out if it's working or not 😉

[markusfisch]

I tried adding shadows in a branch, but somehow I really didn't like the look of the icons getting smaller because of the shadows 😞 Here's a screenshot of how that looked like:

Instead, I just added an option to darken the background when the pie menu is visible:

https://github.com/markusfisch/PieLauncher/assets/485246/343667e9-5db2-4e45-92ca-9bf7ce68d97e

This is available in version 1.15.0 (where it must be enabled in the settings). This version is already on it's way through Google Play and should become available shortly.

[foxjaw]

For those who don't use solid color wallpapers I think darkening the background might even out & polish the visibility of pie.