The Ultimate 2025 Guide to Kirigami/Desktop Modules

Remember when an application was just... an application? A static window on a desktop, doing one thing, in one place. In 2025, that idea feels like a relic from a bygone era. We live in a world of fluid interfaces, where our digital tools need to adapt from a 32-inch ultrawide monitor to a 6-inch phone screen, often in the same day. This is the world that KDE's Kirigami was built for, and it’s more relevant now than ever.

If you're a developer looking to build modern, beautiful, and truly adaptive applications, you've come to the right place. Forget what you think you know about traditional desktop development. We're diving deep into the framework that’s powering the next generation of user interfaces: Kirigami.

What is Kirigami, Really? (And Why It Matters in 2025)

At its heart, Kirigami is a set of UI components built on top of Qt/QML. But that’s like saying a supercar is just a set of wheels and an engine. Kirigami is a philosophy. It’s built around the principle of convergence—the idea that a single codebase can produce an application that feels perfectly native and intuitive on any form factor.

Originally born from the needs of the Plasma Mobile project, Kirigami has matured into a powerhouse for desktop development. By 2025, the performance overhead of QML has been significantly optimized, and its integration with system services, especially on Wayland, is seamless. It’s no longer just for KDE apps; it’s a compelling choice for anyone in the Qt ecosystem who wants to build an app that looks and feels at home everywhere.

Think about applications like NeoChat, Tokodon, or even the Steam Deck’s Gaming Mode UI. These experiences showcase Kirigami's strength: they are responsive, touch-friendly, and packed with features, without feeling cluttered or compromised on a traditional desktop.

The Core Components: Your New Best Friends

Getting started with Kirigami means getting to know its core building blocks. These aren't just widgets; they are intelligent components that handle much of the complex UI logic for you.

The Foundation: Kirigami.ApplicationWindow

This is your starting point. It’s more than a simple window; it's a context-aware container that understands whether it's running on a mobile or desktop device. It automatically manages things like drawers for mobile navigation and integrates with desktop features like global menus.

Effortless Navigation with Kirigami.Page

Forget manually managing view stacks. A Kirigami.Page is the primary canvas for your content. You can push and pop pages onto a stack, and Kirigami handles the transitions and the back button logic automatically. On a desktop, this might be a simple view change. On mobile, it's the fluid, animated transition users expect.

Contextual Controls: Kirigami.Action & ToolBars

This is where the magic of convergence truly shines. A Kirigami.Action defines an operation—like "Save" or "Settings." You define it once, with its icon, text, and shortcut. Kirigami then decides the best place to put it. On desktop, it might appear in a menubar or a main toolbar. On mobile, it could be a floating action button or an item in a bottom navigation bar. You design the intent, and Kirigami handles the placement.

Kirigami.Page {
    title: "My Awesome App"

    actions: [
        Kirigami.Action {
            text: i18n("Settings")
            icon.name: "preferences-system"
            onTriggered: console.log("Settings opened!")
        },
        Kirigami.Action {
            text: i18n("Add New Item")
            icon.name: "list-add"
            placement: "main"
            onTriggered: createNewItem()
        }
    ]

    // ... your page content here ...
}
  

This small snippet demonstrates how you declare actions that can be intelligently placed anywhere in the UI. That's power and flexibility, simplified.

Beyond the App: Crafting Desktop Modules & Widgets

The term "desktop modules" in 2025 isn't about a specific API; it’s about a design paradigm. It's the shift from monolithic applications to a collection of focused, reusable, and often independent components. Kirigami is uniquely suited for this.

The most prominent example is KDE Plasma's own widgets (Plasmoids). Many modern Plasmoids are built with Kirigami. You can create a weather widget, a system monitor, or a media controller that lives on the desktop or in a panel. Because it's using Kirigami, that same widget can have a compact view for a panel and an expanded, more detailed view when placed on the desktop—all from one codebase.

This modularity extends to full applications. You can design a settings panel as a self-contained Kirigami module and then embed it within your main application window. This makes your code cleaner, easier to maintain, and promotes reusability across projects.

Kirigami vs. The World: A 2025 Showdown

How does Kirigami stack up against other popular frameworks? There's no single "best" tool, but Kirigami has a unique value proposition.

The key takeaway? If your goal is a high-performance application that feels equally at home on a Linux desktop, a Windows machine, and an Android phone, Kirigami offers one of the most compelling and complete solutions available today.

Tips for Success: Building Great Kirigami Apps in 2025

1. Embrace the HIG: Start with the KDE Human Interface Guidelines. It’s not a rigid rulebook but a guide to making apps that feel intuitive and consistent. Understand the patterns before you decide to break them.
2. Think in Components: Don't build massive, single-file QML pages. Break down your UI into smaller, reusable components. Your future self will thank you.
3. Profile Your Performance: QML is fast, but it's not magic. Use tools like the QML Profiler to find and fix bottlenecks. Avoid complex JavaScript in tight loops and be mindful of how you bind properties.
4. Master State Management: For complex applications, don't just scatter properties everywhere. Consider using a C++ backend to manage your application's state and expose it cleanly to your QML front-end. This separation of concerns is crucial for scalability.
5. Accessibility is Not an Afterthought: Use properties like Accessible.name and Accessible.description to ensure your application is usable by everyone, including those who rely on screen readers.

The Future is Convergent

The line between desktop and mobile has blurred into oblivion. Users expect and deserve applications that respect their context and their hardware. Kirigami isn't just a UI framework; it's an answer to this modern reality.

By providing a powerful, flexible, and developer-friendly toolkit, it empowers you to build the next generation of software—apps that are not just functional, but delightful to use, no matter the screen. So, fire up KDevelop or Qt Creator, start a new Kirigami project, and begin building for the fluid, convergent future of 2025 and beyond.