Now that Plasma Login Manager is officially out in the wild as of 6.6, I’ve been thinking about how we can move past the limitations we had with SDDM. Specifically, I’d love to see the login screen dynamically reflect the selected user’s desktop environment before they even log in.
The Idea
Right now, the login screen is a bit of a “neutral” zone. It’s functional, but it feels disconnected from the actual Plasma desktop if you have any custom themes configured. I’m proposing that when a user selects their name from the list, PLM instantly switches its “aesthetic stack” (wallpaper plugin, color scheme, cursors, icons, etc. etc.) to match that specific user’s configuration. It would provide immediate, unmistakable visual confirmation of who is logging in before they type their password and make the transition into the session feel much more seamless.
Addressing the Technical Hurdles
I know the two biggest roadblocks for this kind of thing have always been encrypted home directories and UI performance. To get around those, I’m envisioning a staged approach through the KCM:
The Bridge: We could add a toggle in the Login Manager settings module for users to opt in that “exports” a copy of their aesthetic assets to a system-accessible, read-only cache (e.g., /var/lib/plasma-login-manager/user-previews/).
Security: This avoids the need for the login manager to try reading from an encrypted /home folder.
Performance: Because these assets are cached in a system directory, PLM can swap them instantly without any disk-polling lag when you click a username.
Why now?
Since the team is no longer keeping SDDM on life support and has full control over the PLM codebase, this feels like the right time to talk about “First Impressions.” It turns the login process into a personalized portal rather than just a gatekeeper.
I’ve already submit a feature request for this (517320), but I wanted to bring it here to see what everyone else thinks. Does this feel like a natural evolution for Plasma? Are there some edge cases I’m overlooking?
Sounds like a cool idea if it can be implemented, I really enjoy aesthetics in my setups even if they are only for things that sometimes I will only see for a short time.
Precisely. Instead of only having a single background and theme at the login screen, you would have different ones for each user that matches their desktop wallpaper and theme set up. Does that help clarify it? Basically the visual aesthetics of the login screen would change in real-time when a new user is selected.
You are absolutely right, this is something the KDE team would implement, I’ve already submitted a formal feature request and posted this exact thing in the KDE Discuss forum. I just figured this would be a good place to discuss it as well.
This is an interesting idea, even from an purely aestetic point of view on a single user system. Of course, I have no idea if it would be possible to implement with the current architecture.
At current state, I know that day/night wallpaper works on PLM. But day/night color scheme not. That is from a single user perspective. Your idea is at another level, each user theme settings to be recognized at PLM.
At my lightdm-installations I always switched off the drawing of user backgrounds. Why? Because not everyone should see my background picture, and not everyone has a picture I want to have a look at. And some user backgrounds make it impossible to find the login-field. But okay, that depends on the user with accounts on that special machine.
It’s a nice feature, but hopefully there is a switch to turn it off when I want. At least there’s nothing to be shown, when the user account is encrypted. In that case there should be a default background.
