The Taskbar Auto-Hide Feature No Longer Works

[martinjdz]

I am running Kubuntu 24.04 LTS on an ASUS desktop PC. I have two taskbars― one at the top of the screen and one at the bottom.

The top taskbar has the Global Menu, the Calendar, the Trash Can, the Volume Control, and some Quick Launchers.

The bottom taskbar has the Application Launcher, the Task Manager, the System Tray, and the Virtual Desktop Pager.

Both taskbars are set to hide themselves automatically as soon as they are no longer being used. This auto-hide feature has worked perfectly for a long time― at least, until now. For some reason, the taskbars now want always to stay activated. To force each one to hide, I must now click directly on the taskbar and then click on some other spot near the taskbar.

I have been getting regular software updates. I believe that this change happened a day or two after a recent update.

I have tried the following:

• Unplugging and re-inserting the mouse and keyboard USB connectors.
• Restarting the PC
• Using Bleachbit to clear up the system, removing temporary files and other junk
• Using the Enter Edit Mode option to re-apply my taskbar choices.

None of these steps have helped.

I am concerned about this problem mainly because I do not want the taskbars to burn an image into the screen by remaining active at all times. (This has happened to me in the past. It takes a few years, but it does happen.)

[martinjdz]

An Update to My Problem:

I believe that I fixed the problem. I made a couple of changes in System Settings. I must have forced Kubuntu to repair something that was wrong in the settings for desktop features.

I went into Window Management > Window Behavior > Focus. I changed the Window Activation Policy to Focus Follows Mouse.

Under Window Behavior > Advanced, I enabled the feature Hide Utility Windows for Inactive Applications.

It seems that the taskbars once again auto-hide.