Adds hamburger menu to the Layers Pad with the remaining Layer actions

[pedropaulosuzuki]

With the new hamburger menu in the layers pad, we should have no discoverability problem (besides this addition, there's also the right-click menu on the layers). So, this also removes the Layers menu from the main Pinta hamburger menu.

Fixes #1386.

[pedropaulosuzuki]

@cameronwhite any idea why this is breaking on MacOS? I cannot test because I don't have any of those devices.

[cameronwhite]

@cameronwhite any idea why this is breaking on MacOS? I cannot test because I don't have any of those devices.

I don't think it's anything related to your PR - the same build failure just happened for the master branch after the PR I merged earlier. I'll try to look into it soon, but it's probably a bad update for one of the native libraries we install from homebrew

[cameronwhite]

I think the CI issues might be fixed (or maybe are just randomly failing) - I got it to go green after re-running the jobs

A couple thoughts on the change:

• The extra icon increases the minimum width of the sidebar, and this felt noticeably bigger to me
• The icons for Move Layer Up / Down (which aren't the greatest icons to begin with) look pretty similar to the hamburger icon when they're all enabled

What do you think about moving one or more buttons (perhaps the Move Layer Up / Down items) into the hamburger menu? Especially if #1218 is later implemented for drag and drop, these would be used less often

[pedropaulosuzuki]

I think the CI issues might be fixed (or maybe are just randomly failing) - I got it to go green after re-running the jobs

A couple thoughts on the change:

* The extra icon increases the minimum width of the sidebar, and this felt noticeably bigger to me

* The icons for Move Layer Up / Down (which aren't the greatest icons to begin with) look pretty similar to the hamburger icon when they're all enabled

What do you think about moving one or more buttons (perhaps the Move Layer Up / Down items) into the hamburger menu? Especially if #1218 is later implemented for drag and drop, these would be used less often

I think removing those icons before having drag and drop might make them hard to discover, and people would complain about needing to click twice when previously they only needed to click once™. But I agree they also look too similar at the moment. Maybe we could use up-symbolic and down-symbolic instead?

[cameronwhite]

Those icons look much better 👍

[pedropaulosuzuki]

Those icons look much better 👍

Here are the new icons:

Screencast.from.22-03-2026.01.10.25.webm

Doesn't solve the increased width (which I'm not very happy either...), but should solve the other points you brought up.

[pedropaulosuzuki]

@cameronwhite maybe we could put all the buttons inside a GtkBox, should reduce the space they occupy.

Here is how that would look:

Here is before this patch, the layers pad ends up with almost the exact same width:

And here is the patch as-is, meaning without the Gtk.Box reducing the width:

[pedropaulosuzuki]

Another option would be to move the up and down buttons to the top of the bar, which would free some space below. We could do the same for the History pad and free some of that space in the bottom. This would require a more involved code change, though.

[cameronwhite]

Thanks! It looks ok with the smaller spacing, my only gripe is that it's a bit inconsistent with other UI elements by avoiding the standard spacing for the Adwaita toolbar style

One other idea I had is related to #1386 (comment)
If the "Add New Layer" button became a button menu with the option to also "Import From File", moving the "Duplicate Current Layer" option in there could also be logical and remove an extra button

[pedropaulosuzuki]

Thanks! It looks ok with the smaller spacing, my only gripe is that it's a bit inconsistent with other UI elements by avoiding the standard spacing for the Adwaita toolbar style

One other idea I had is related to #1386 (comment) If the "Add New Layer" button became a button menu with the option to also "Import From File", moving the "Duplicate Current Layer" option in there could also be logical and remove an extra button

Screencast.from.24-03-2026.20.46.37.webm

I did it, but I didn't quite like it. We add another menu, when we could just put those items in the hamburger menu that already exists, creating complexity at very little gain. People will also complain we made it harder to duplicate the layer, which was one click away. Also, the Adw.SplitButton arrow might confuse people, since it now looks like the Move Layer Up button.

[cameronwhite]

Thanks, yeah I agree the arrow makes it look confusing with the other buttons so the reduced spacing seems like the best approach for now 👍

[yioannides]

@pedropaulosuzuki I'm super late to comment on this one, but I have a couple of things I'd like to mention if I may:

Moving the Layers menu entry into the Layers section makes a lot of sense as a first step, but I believe Import From File... would be more discoverable underneath File > New Screenshot... as Import... (following standard UX nomenclature for graphic editors), because being hidden in a secondary hamburger menu might be obtuse for the average end-user. I still firmly believe DnD should be prioritized (as mentioned in #1362 ), but at least having the option in an easily accessible menu would be better.

I also think horizontal / vertical flip are important functions that belong in the top-left toolbar first and in a sub-menu second. What do you think?

[pedropaulosuzuki]

@pedropaulosuzuki I'm super late to comment on this one, but I have a couple of things I'd like to mention if I may:

Moving the Layers menu entry into the Layers section makes a lot of sense as a first step, but I believe Import From File... would be more discoverable underneath File > New Screenshot... as Import... (following standard UX nomenclature for graphic editors), because being hidden in a secondary hamburger menu might be obtuse for the average end-user. I still firmly believe DnD should be prioritized (as mentioned in #1362 ), but at least having the option in an easily accessible menu would be better.

Agreed. I'd be open to having this option in the File menu. @cameronwhite, any thoughts?

I also think horizontal / vertical flip are important functions that belong in the top-left toolbar first and in a sub-menu second. What do you think?

Well, those only flip the current layer, while we have another "horizontal / vertical flip" in the Image menu, which flips all layers at once:

My idea is to, at some point, move the remaining layer options to a button in the layer itself (briefly discussed in #1386), but I didn't do it now because of the "Import from file..." option, but this could work perfectly with your suggestion of moving it to the File menu.

[yioannides]

Well, those only flip the current layer, while we have another "horizontal / vertical flip" in the Image menu, which flips all layers at once:

Hmmm interesting... I think the master flip options being in a menu is already good, but the layer flip options should be out in the toolbar first and optionally in the sub-hamburger menu.

My idea is to, at some point, move the remaining layer options to a button in the layer itself

I agree, though we should leave anything canvas-related as is, being the equivalent of an Edit menu and everything.

[cameronwhite]

I don't mind having it in the main File menu - it would just need a different label to make it clear that it's adding a new layer and is different from the Open command.

In the main toolbar I would probably have expected a flip button to apply to the whole image rather than just the current layer?

[yioannides]

In the main toolbar I would probably have expected a flip button to apply to the whole image rather than just the current layer?

That's a good point, since the topmost toolbar is for master processing, so should be the flip options.

How about a secondary toolbar for layers underneath the main toolbar? As Pinta inevitably gets more features, it might be better to future-proof it early on by taking space into account; there's probably only so much we can fill in the Layers section toolbar and stuff inside a hamburger menu.

Potential tools:

• layer auto-selection
• deselect
• rotate clockwise
• rotate anticlockwise
• raise to top
• raise
• lower
• lower to bottom
• layer effects

(@pedropaulosuzuki, would also like to hear your opinion as well)

[pedropaulosuzuki]

In the main toolbar I would probably have expected a flip button to apply to the whole image rather than just the current layer?

That's a good point, since the topmost toolbar is for master processing, so should be the flip options.

How about a secondary toolbar for layers underneath the main toolbar? As Pinta inevitably gets more features, it might be better to future-proof it early on by taking space into account; there's probably only so much we can fill in the Layers section toolbar and stuff inside a hamburger menu.

Potential tools:
* layer auto-selection
* deselect
* rotate clockwise
* rotate anticlockwise
* raise to top
* raise
* lower
* lower to bottom
* layer effects

(@pedropaulosuzuki, would also like to hear your opinion as well)

I believe those should live in the Layers pad, as it's the home of the Layer operations. As more things are added, I think something like the Blender tabs would work well to avoid clutter, while remaining powerful and feature-rich.

[yioannides]

Yeah, I can see that being a thing, that's cool. I can also see it being on the far right, Inkscape style.

If you ever feel like coding that in, I'd love to design some mockups. The current hamburger menu won't work in the long time, I know that much.