Bitcoin Price (Plasma 5 widget)
KDE Plasma 5 widget that shows the bitcoin price in EUR, fetched from the CoinGecko API.
Display styles
Three display styles, configurable in the settings dialog:
| Style | Description |
|---|---|
| Plain text | Trend-colored text (green/red/grey) |
| Split-flap board | Airport board: white digit flaps, white € sign in the default font, cascading flip animation on price changes (configurable duration), trend LED |
| Nixie tubes | Retro amber glowing digits in glass tubes with configurable random flicker, white € sign in the default font, trend LED |
In the split-flap and nixie styles the digits keep their display color and the trend (up/down/unchanged) is shown on a small LED next to the display. Display style changes apply immediately, without restarting the shell.
| Situation | Plain text color | Trend LED |
|---|---|---|
| Price up | green | green |
| Price down | red | red |
| Price unchanged / first reading | grey | grey |
| API failure (network error, 4xx/5xx, rate limit 429) | -- |
grey |
Format: 68,969 € (thousands separators follow the system locale, rounded to
whole euros) preceded by the bundled Bitcoin icon in the compact and full
representations.
Configuration
- Refresh interval (minutes) — default 5, minimum 5, maximum 1440. The 5-minute floor exists because the CoinGecko API allows one request per 5 minutes. A hint text in the config dialog explains this.
- Split-flap cascade (seconds) — default 3, range 1–15. Spreads the flip animation of a price change evenly over this many seconds (applies to the split-flap display style). Only shown when that style is selected.
- Nixie flicker (0 = off) — default 40, range 0–100. Random cathode-dropout flicker of the nixie tubes; 0 disables it, higher values flicker more often and deeper. Only shown when the nixie style is selected.
Configurable via right-click on the widget → Configure Bitcoin Price… → General.
Installation
Graphical
Double-click bitcoin-price-1.3.0.plasmoid in Dolphin (Plasma installs it to
~/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids/ automatically). The latest build is attached
to the v1.3.0 release.
Terminal
kpackagetool5 --type Plasma/Applet --upgrade bitcoin-price-1.3.0.plasmoid
# Then restart the shell if needed:
plasmashell --replace &
Upgrading an already-installed widget requires --upgrade (--install fails
when the plugin id already exists).
Uninstall:
kpackagetool5 --type Plasma/Applet --remove nl.a14r.bitcoinprice
Notes
- The API URL uses
vs_currencies=eur. The original request referenced ausdURL, but the requirement was "price versus the euro" with a €-sign; showing a dollar amount under a € sign would be wrong. - The trend comparison is made against the last known price. After an API failure that reference is kept, so the color is correct again as soon as fresh data arrives.
- Without a CoinGecko API key the API may occasionally return 429; the widget
shows
--until the next successful poll. - Tested on Plasma 5.27 / Qt 5.15. Plasma 6 is expected to work but is untested.
Debugging
The widget logs to the plasmashell journal:
journalctl --user -u plasma-plasmashell.service | grep bitcoinprice
Expected lines: started, refresh interval: N minutes, fetched EUR <price>,
or fetch failed, HTTP status: <code>.
Repository layout
metadata.desktop
contents/
├── config/
│ ├── main.xml # config schema (refreshMinutes, min 5, max 1440)
│ └── config.qml # config dialog registry (ConfigModel/ConfigCategory)
├── images/bitcoin.svg # bundled Bitcoin icon
└── ui/
├── main.qml # widget + fetch/compare logic
└── configGeneral.qml # interval setting page
Repackage yourself:
zip -r bitcoin-price.plasmoid metadata.desktop contents
License
MIT — see LICENSE.