This is a fork of kwin-effects-forceblur that implements Windows 7's Aero Glass effect for KDE 6.

kwin-effects-forceblur

A fork of the KWin Blur effect for KDE Plasma 6 with the ability to blur any window on Wayland and X11.

Latest features are available on the develop branch.

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

Features

Wayland support
Fake blur (optional, draws an already blurred image behind windows, which results in lower GPU usage)
Rounded corners (not perfect, as it's currently just a pixel mask)
Fix for artifacts when using a transparent color scheme
Ability to disable force blur for decorations, so that it won't interfere with ones that support blur, such as Klassy

Installation

NixOS

flake.nix:

{
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";

    kwin-effects-forceblur = {
      url = "github:taj-ny/kwin-effects-forceblur";
      inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
    };
  };
}

{ inputs, pkgs, ... }:

{
  environment.systemPackages = [
    inputs.kwin-effects-forceblur.packages.${pkgs.system}.default
  ];
}

Building from source

Dependencies:

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

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

Usage

Note

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

Since kwin-effects-forceblur is a fork, you need to disable the stock blur effect and any other blur effects you may be using. Using force blur together with another blur effect will result in blur being applied twice.

Install the plugin.
Open the Desktop Effects page in System Settings.
Disable any blur effects.
Enable the Force Blur effect.

For more detailed descriptions of some options, check out the 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
Alban-Boissard/kwin-effects-blur-respect-rounded-decorations - Rounded corners
thegeekywanderer/kwin-effects-blur-respect-rounded-decorations - Fix for bottom corners

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