https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=502273
Bug ID: 502273
Summary: Plasma prefers PNG icons over SVG
Classification: Plasma
Product: plasmashell
Version: 6.3.3
Platform: Other
OS: Linux
Status: REPORTED
Severity: normal
Priority: NOR
Component: general
Assignee: plasma-b...@kde.org
Reporter: pallasw...@proton.me
CC: k...@davidedmundson.co.uk
Target Milestone: 1.0
SUMMARY
SVG icons are not used, if the theme contains PNG icons for that application.
STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Install an application with SVG and PNG icons
2. Change the SVG icon to something visually distinct (eg use another app's
icon) so you can tell if it is being used at all
3. Restart plasma to apply the change
OBSERVED RESULT
SVG icon is not being used
EXPECTED RESULT
SVG icon is used
SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20250329
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.12.0
Qt Version: 6.8.2
Kernel Version: 6.13.8-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 24 × AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor
Memory: 31.2 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090/PCIe/SSE2
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
I really can't tell if this is a bug or a design flaw. I'm not even sure if
it's a plasma thing, a frameworks thing, a qt thing or an XDG thing... Possibly
all of the above.
Reading the XDG icon theme spec, it says that applications should ship with a
48x48 PNG, and also that it will search PNG format first, and that it will stop
the search on the first hit.
This suggest that XDG's intention is that DEs ignore scalable SVGs in favour of
scaling PNGs. In which case, Plasma appears to be compliant.
But it also says that applications could install SVGs so that nicely scaling
icons are available. Which conflicts with all the above. And I feel like Plasma
would want to be using SVGs wherever possible.
It also says it scans by directory, before scanning by file extension, which it
obviously does (because that allows icons in the home dir to override those in
the root) but even an SVG in a prior directory (such as in
~/.local/share/icons) will not be used if a PNG is present even in the later
directory (such as /usr/share/icons/). So, that doesn't quite add up, either.
So I don't know. Any advice would be most welcome, I am a bit puzzled as to how
this is meant to work, but I'm pretty sure it's not working optimally at the
moment. Seems weird to have all these apps shipping SVG icons that don't get
used.
I've come across this in attempt to help a dev package an app, and we don't
know what icons to package. We'd like to package PNG for compatibility with
other DE, but we'd like the SVG icons to be used when they'd look nicer.
This also effects that app's facility for users to provide a custom icon, since
any PNGs in the package, will mean that they now need to generate multiple
fixed-size PNGs when it would be nice to just let them drop a single SVG.
Thanks for your advice.
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