Color Folder (Plasma 6 port)

A KDE Dolphin service menu for changing the colour of specific folders, but compatible with KDE Plasma 6.

This is an unofficial port of dfaust/kde-color-folder, which supports KDE4 and Plasma 5. All original functionality is preserved; only the parts that broke under Plasma 6 have been updated.

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Usage

1. Open Dolphin and navigate to the folder whose colour you want to change.
2. Right-click the folder and choose Tint.
3. Pick one of the eleven colours: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Magenta, Brown, Cyan, Grey or Black. The folder icon changes colour immediately, however you may need to refresh the folder for it to show.
4. To revert, right-click the folder again and choose Tint → Remove color. This restores the default folder icon.
5. Tint → Remove .directory file deletes the hidden .directory file entirely, wiping any other view settings stored in it.

Multiple folders can be coloured at once: select them all, right-click, and choose a colour.

Note: if the colour does not refresh straight away, press F5 in the Dolphin view. Dolphin does not always re-read a folder's .directory file immediately after it is edited externally — this is a known Dolphin behaviour, not a fault of this service menu.

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What changed for Plasma 6

Area	Plasma 4/5	Plasma 6
Service menu path	~/.local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/	~/.local/share/kio/servicemenus/
System-wide path	/usr/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/	/usr/share/kio/servicemenus/
.desktop must be executable	Not required	Required (security authorisation check)
Config tool	kf5-config	kf6-config
Sycoca rebuild	kbuildsycoca5	kbuildsycoca6
ServiceTypes= key	KonqPopupMenu/Plugin	Removed; use MimeType=inode/directory; only

The install/uninstall scripts detect which version of Plasma is running (kf6-config for Plasma 6, kf5-config for Plasma 5, with a hard-coded fallback) and handle both automatically, so this port is backwards-compatible with Plasma 5 as well.

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Installation

Official KDE Store

This service menu is published on the KDE Store in the Dolphin Service Menus category, which also makes it installable directly from within Dolphin via Configure Dolphin → Context Menu → Download New Services.

From source

chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

That's it. Right-click any folder in Dolphin and look for the Tint submenu.

Manual installation

# Create the directory (Plasma 6 path)
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/kio/servicemenus

# Copy files
cp colorfolder-breeze.desktop ~/.local/share/kio/servicemenus/colorfolder.desktop
cp colorfolder.sh              ~/.local/share/kio/servicemenus/colorfolder.sh

# Update the Exec path inside the .desktop file
SPATH=~/.local/share/kio/servicemenus
sed -i "s/colorfolder\.sh/${SPATH//\//\\/}\/colorfolder.sh/g" "$SPATH/colorfolder.desktop"

# Mark both files executable (mandatory for Plasma 6)
chmod +x ~/.local/share/kio/servicemenus/colorfolder.desktop
chmod +x ~/.local/share/kio/servicemenus/colorfolder.sh

# Rebuild service cache
kbuildsycoca6

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Uninstallation

chmod +x uninstall.sh
./uninstall.sh

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How it works

The service menu writes an Icon=folder-<colour> entry into the hidden .directory file inside each selected folder. Dolphin and KIO read this file to determine which icon to display. The colours available are: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Magenta, Brown, Cyan, Grey, Black.

The Remove color action comments out the Icon= line, restoring the default folder appearance. Remove .directory file deletes the .directory file entirely.

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Requirements

• KDE Plasma 6 / Dolphin 24.x (Plasma 5 is also supported by the install scripts)
• Breeze icon theme (or any icon theme that includes folder-red, folder-green, etc.)
• bash

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Licence and credits

• Original Color Folder for KDE4/Plasma 5 by Daniel Faust (hessijames@gmail.com), 2006–2018.
• Plasma 6 port maintained separately; backwards-compatible with Plasma 5.
• Licensed under the GNU GPL-2.0 — see the LICENSE file.