Note: Krema is under active development. Core features are functional, but some features are still in progress. See the Roadmap for details.
A lightweight, high-performance dock for KDE Plasma 6 — spiritual successor to Latte Dock.
Krema brings back the beloved dock experience for KDE Plasma users who miss Latte Dock. Built from scratch with C++23, Qt 6, and KDE Frameworks 6, it delivers smooth parabolic zoom animations, live window previews via PipeWire, and deep native integration with the Plasma desktop.
- Your dock is back — Krema picks up where Latte Dock left off, purpose-built for Plasma 6
- A dock that speaks Plasma — Uses KDE's own frameworks (Kirigami, KConfig, KColorScheme, KGlobalAccel) and respects your theme, shortcuts, and desktop conventions
- Lightweight by design — GPU-accelerated rendering via QRhi, Wayland-native via Layer Shell, lazy resource allocation
- Make it yours — 6 background styles including acrylic frosted glass and Mica, configurable zoom, spacing, and position
- Parabolic Zoom — macOS-style icon magnification on hover
- Icon Size Normalization — Auto-detects icon padding and scales for uniform appearance
- Indicator Dots — Visual markers for running applications
- Pin/Unpin — Keep favorite apps in the dock
- Context Menu — Right-click for pin, close, new instance (KDE Breeze native)
- Mouse Wheel Cycling — Scroll to switch between windows of the same app
- Panel-Inherit — Match your Plasma panel style automatically
- Semi-Transparent — Subtle translucency over your desktop
- Transparent — Fully transparent dock background
- Tinted — Custom color with adjustable opacity
- Acrylic / Frosted Glass — Blur + noise texture effect
- Mica — System accent color based, inspired by Windows 11 Mica
- Adaptive Opacity — Switches to opaque when windows overlap the dock
- PipeWire Thumbnails — Live GPU-efficient window previews on hover
- Multi-Window List — All windows of grouped apps shown together
- Click-to-Activate — Click a preview to switch to that window
- Preview Close Button — Close windows directly from the preview popup
- KDE Native Integration — Kirigami UI, KDE color schemes, Plasma theme colors
- Wayland Native — Built on Layer Shell protocol for proper dock behavior
- Smart Visibility — Always visible, auto-hide, dodge windows, or smart hide modes
- Drag & Drop — Reorder dock items, drop files onto apps, add launchers by dragging .desktop files
- Settings UI — Kirigami-based settings dialog (FormCard) for easy customization
- Keyboard Accessibility — Full keyboard navigation with AT-SPI screen reader support
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Meta+` | Toggle dock visibility |
| Meta+1-9 | Activate Nth app |
| Meta+Shift+1-9 | Launch new instance of Nth app |
| Meta+F5 | Focus dock for keyboard navigation |
| Arrow keys | Navigate between dock items / preview thumbnails |
| Enter | Activate focused item |
| Escape | Exit keyboard navigation |
Krema packages are available via Open Build Service (OBS).
| Distribution | Architecture | Package Format |
|---|---|---|
| Arch Linux | x86_64, aarch64 | .pkg.tar.zst |
| Fedora 40, 41, 42 | x86_64, aarch64 | RPM |
| openSUSE Tumbleweed | x86_64, aarch64 | RPM |
| Ubuntu 24.04, 24.10 | amd64, arm64 | DEB |
| Debian Trixie (13) | amd64, arm64 | DEB |
Building from Source
sudo pacman -S --needed \
cmake extra-cmake-modules ninja ccache just gcc \
qt6-base qt6-declarative qt6-wayland qt6-shadertools \
kwindowsystem kconfig kcoreaddons ki18n \
kglobalaccel kcolorscheme kiconthemes kcrash kxmlgui kservice \
kirigami layer-shell-qt wayland kpipewire plasma-workspace \
catch2| Dependency | Minimum Version |
|---|---|
| KDE Plasma | 6.0.0 |
| Qt 6 | 6.8.0 |
| KDE Frameworks 6 | 6.0.0 |
| CMake | 3.22 |
| C++ Compiler | GCC 13+ / Clang 17+ |
just configure # cmake --preset dev
just build # cmake --build --preset dev
just test # ctest --preset dev
just run # run kremaSee ROADMAP.md for the full development roadmap.
Krema is a spiritual successor to Latte Dock, which served the KDE community for years as the go-to dock application. We are grateful for the Latte Dock project and the community that built and maintained it. Krema aims to carry that spirit forward for KDE Plasma 6.
Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue to discuss your idea before submitting a pull request.
Krema is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later.