[PLASMA 5] How can I make desktop application links show in only appropriate Activity?

[Silent Observer]

I've recently installed Kubuntu 20.04.1, and I'm trying out "Activities" -- which didn't exist, as far as I was aware, when I last used Kubuntu (on 14.04).

I sort of understand the idea: to have a different environment -- wallpaper, Favorites, etc. when using the computer for different tasks. Pursuant to that, I've set up three: "Daily" for general activities like web browsing, email, etc., "Games" for stuff like There, Kerbal Space Program, Quern: Undying Thoughts, etc., and "Photography" for Vuescan, GIMP, Darktable, etc.

I've found, however, that any application launcher icons I put on the desktop are present in all three Activities. I can see why this is happening -- these are .desktop files present in the Desktop folder, and Plasma is just displaying those. I can move them to different locations on the different Activity desktops (just as I can set different wallpaper backgrounds), but sometimes I'd rather have those desktop icons (launch with a single click) than have to click at least twice on the Application Launcher even for applications that "show in Favorites" on a particular Activity.

Is there a way to make those desktop icons show in only a single Activity, or do I have to choose between Kerbal Space Program showing on my Photography desktop, or having to click into the Application Launcher to start the game when in the "Games" activity?

[Snowhog]

Maybe helpful. Read through this thread on kde.forum.org.

[claydoh]

tl;dr:

Activities have been around since 2008, first seen in Kubuntu 8.10, btw

The default desktop 'layout' is to display the contents of your ~/Desktop folder, so unless you specify a different location to be displayed for each one, they are all showing files from the same place.
You can right-click on your desktop, 'Configure Desktop', and go to the Location section to change which folder is used. Creating new ones specifically for each activity works well. You do have to do this for each activity, or switch each Layout from the Folder View to the 'Desktop' layout, but this does not allow for actual files to be displayed, only widgets and launcher icons.






As an aside, originally, Plasma used to use the 'Desktop' layout as the default, so Activities did not have this issue. When they fairly recently moved to the Folder View as the default, this to me is a small oversight, confusing.

[Silent Observer]

IOW, it's buggy.

I got the game icons I already had (linked to the "Games" activity) to show only on the Games activity by setting "Folder" mode and marking "Files linked to the current activity" under Locations -- but those were manually created "Link to application" icons; if I try to "add to desktop" from the Application Launcher, it apparently creates a file (because the next time I'll get a warning about replacing a file with itself), but I can't see the icons. Further, I can't reposition the icons.

[Silent Observer]

Okay, now it makes more sense. Apparently you have to create folders for each Activity, set to Custom Location and point to the folders, then distribute .desktop or .lnk files appropriately to get them to show and be movable in specific activities.