KWin Better Blur

Better Blur (formerly kwin-effects-forceblur) is a fork the KWin Blur effect for KDE Plasma 6 with additional features and bug fixes.

^{Window opacity has been set to 85% for System Settings, Dolphin and VSCodium, Firefox uses a transparent theme | NixOS configuration}

Features

• X11 and Wayland support
• Force blur
• Rounded corners with optional anti-aliasing
• Optional blur texture caching for much lower GPU usage, works best with tiling

Bug fixes

Fixes for blur-related Plasma bugs that haven't been patched yet.

• Blur may sometimes disappear during animations
• Transparent color schemes don't work properly with the Breeze application style

Installation

Building from source

Dependencies

• CMake
• Extra CMake Modules
• Plasma 6
• Qt 6
• KF6
• KWin development packages

Building

git clone https://github.com/taj-ny/kwin-effects-forceblur
cd kwin-effects-forceblur
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
make
sudo make install

Remove the build directory when rebuilding the effect.

Usage

[!NOTE] If the effect stops working after a system upgrade, you will need to rebuild it.

This effect will conflict with the stock blur effect and any other forks of it.

1. Install the plugin.
2. Open the Desktop Effects page in System Settings.
3. Disable any blur effects.
4. Enable the Better Blur effect.

For more detailed descriptions of some options, check out this wiki page.

Window transparency

The window needs to be translucent in order for the blur to be visible. This can be done in multiple ways:

• Use a transparent theme for the program if it supports it
• Use a transparent color scheme, such as Alpha
• Create a window rule that reduces the window opacity

Obtaining window classes

The classes of windows to blur can be specified in the effect settings. You can obtain them in two ways:

• Run qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin org.kde.KWin.queryWindowInfo and click on the window. You can use either resourceClass or resourceName.
• Right click on the titlebar, go to More Options and Configure Special Window/Application Settings. The class can be found at Window class (application). If there is a space, for example Navigator firefox, you can use either Navigator or firefox.

High cursor latency or stuttering on Wayland

This effect can be very resource-intensive if you have a lot of windows open. On Wayland, high GPU load may result in higher cursor latency or even stuttering. If that bothers you, set the following environment variable: KWIN_DRM_NO_AMS=1. If that's not enough, try enabling or disabling the software cursor by also setting KWIN_FORCE_SW_CURSOR=0 or KWIN_FORCE_SW_CURSOR=1.

Intel GPUs use software cursor by default due to this bug, however it doesn't seem to affect all GPUs.

Credits

• a-parhom/LightlyShaders - CMakeLists.txt files