A console-like fullscreen launcher for KDE Plasma, inspired by the PlayStation 3 / PSP XrossMediaBar built for the living room: TV, couch and gamepad.
Built and tested on Plasma BigScreen 6.7 / Qt 6.
- KDE Plasma 6.7+ with plasma-bigscreen installed from your distro's repositories (XMB BigScreen reuses its session backend: controller input, TV settings, environment).
- The Qt6 Multimedia QML module, for the sounds. Most distros ship it with Plasma;
if not:
qt6-multimedia(Arch),qml6-module-qtmultimedia(Debian/Ubuntu),qt6-qtmultimedia(Fedora/openSUSE). - Optional:
plasma-keyboard, so text fields inside regular apps also get a compact pad-navigable keyboard.
git clone https://github.com/FrancescoPnr-dev/xmb-bigscreen.git
cd xmb-bigscreen
sudo ./install.shThen log out and pick XMB BigScreen at the login manager, next to your normal
Plasma session. The installer deploys the homescreen, a thin shell profile on top of
Bigscreen's, the Wayland session and the pad-mapping tool. Remove everything with
sudo ./uninstall.sh.
Tip: the YAMIS monochrome icon theme (KDE Store, GPL-3.0, by DIRN) fits the XMB look perfectly. Install it, then pick it in XMB settings → Icons — it applies to the XMB session only (need logout-login), your desktop keeps its own theme.
Note: the
tools/andpo/folders are development sources only (sound generators, translation files, packaging). Nothing from them ever runs on your machine.
The XMB is the session's homescreen always there, with apps launching on top.
- D-pad / left stick / arrows / wheel / screen edges, move around the cross.
- Cross / Enter / click, launch the highlighted app.
- Triangle, search: the on-screen keyboard opens, Cross types, Square deletes, L1/R1 move through the results, Circle closes. On a real keyboard, just start typing.
- PS/Guide button or Meta, home overlay over the running app: switch or close apps, volume, brightness, power actions, quick settings.
- Circle / Back / Esc, go back, one layer at a time.
- Text fields in apps, with
plasma-keyboardinstalled, a compact keyboard pops up on the focused field and the d-pad drives it.
A login screen cannot be driven by a controller, so a living-room machine should boot straight into the XMB. Enable autologin from System Settings → Login Screen picking the XMB BigScreen session.
The XMB session never locks the screen by itself (no idle lock, no lock on resume) and the power menu has no Lock entry, a password prompt is a dead end on a TV. Logging out still reaches the login screen: the overlay warns first, and rebooting autologs back in.
contents/is the homescreen (a Plasma containment),shell/the thin shell profile,session/the Wayland session script and the pad-mapping tool.- Translations live in
po/. To add a language, createpo/<lang>.pofrompo/plasma_applet_org.kde.plasma.xmbbigscreen.pot, translate it, then runtools/build-i18n.shto regenerate the template and compile the catalogs. - CI checks licensing (REUSE), metadata, translations and the package build on every push and pull request.
- The wave background is a Qt/QML port of PlayStation-3-XMB by Mart (linkev), used under its MIT licence. That project in turn credits Alphardex's CodePen prototype and Sony's original XMB design.
- The settings window replicates the Plasma Bigscreen settings app UI (GPL-2.0-or-later, by the KDE contributors Marco Martin mart@kde.org, Aditya Mehra aix.m@outlook.com, Devin Lin devin@kde.org).
- All sounds are original synthesis (see
tools/); no PlayStation audio is bundled. - App data comes from Plasma's own menu model (the same one Kickoff uses).
All the repo is licensed under GPL-3.0 (see the LICENSES/ folder).
