'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
How to use KDE Plasma Places for a much more efficient desktop
KDE Plasma is a desktop environment that can be enjoyed by people of all skills and needs.
Whether you're a home user, a student, a business user, a grandparent, or a developer, this desktop goes a long way to making your interaction with the operating system easy.
Also: How to install Flatpak app installation on the KDE Plasma desktop
Take, for instance, a feature called Places. Think of Places as a super-charged bookmark tool for the file manager that makes it easy to access your most important folders from the desktop menu or the file manager. By default, the following folders are included in Places:
- Home.
- Desktop.
- Documents.
- Music.
- Pictures.
- Videos.
- Trash.
Click any one of those entries to open the file manager to that location.
Once the Dolphin file manager is open, you'll notice the Places entry at the top of the left pane. So you have two handy ways of accessing these bookmarks.
But what if you want to add a new folder to Places? Say, for instance, you share your Public folder with your network and regularly have to open that folder to edit files. You might want to add Public to Places.
Also: How to enhance the KDE Plasma desktop with widgets
How do you do that? It's actually very easy. Let me show you how it's done.
How to add a new folder to Places
What you'll need: To make this work, you'll need a Linux operating system that uses KDE Plasma as its desktop environment. That's it. Let's make your desktop experience more efficient.
1. Open Dolphin
The first thing to do is log into KDE Plasma and then open the Dolphin file manager.
2. Locate the folder you want to add
In my example, I'm going to add Public to Places. That folder is in the Home directory, so as soon as you open the Dolphin file manager you should see it listed.
We're going to add the Public folder to Places.
3. Add the folder to Places
Right-click the Public folder and, from the popup menu, click Add to Places.
Also: KDE Neon gives you the latest and greatest KDE Plasma desktop
You should see Public automatically added to the Places listing in Dolphin, where you can access it anytime.
Adding Public to Places from the right-click context menu.
Alternate methods of accessing Places entries
From the Desktop menu
There's an even easier way to access places. All you have to do is open the desktop menu and click Places near the bottom left. This will reveal the Places menu, where you can scroll through and open any entry you need.
Accessing Places from the desktop menu.
This method avoids having to first open the Dolphin file manager.
From Favorites
But wait, the fun doesn't end there. If you right-click an entry in the Desktop Menu Places section, you'll see an Add to Favorites option. Click that and the entry to add Public to Favorites.
Adding a Places entry to the Favorites section of the desktop menu.
Now, click the Desktop Menu and click Favorites at the top.
Also: These two Linux desktops are the simplest picks for new users
In this section, you should see Public added, where you can easily access it at any time.
The Favorites section now houses the Public folder from Places.
Places is a great way to give KDE Plasma a more efficient workflow. Start using this handy feature and you'll find it easier to access the places you frequent within the file system hierarchy.