I just updated from Kicad 8 to 9. I’ve noticed that the Measure Tool icon doesn’t display when my screen is small - for example when I’m working from my laptop. If I connect to a larger external monitor, I can see it just fine. I haven’t found a way to resize icons/windows in Kicad to fix the problem (e.g. widen the icon bar manually so all icons display)
BTW, I don’t see this problem with Kicad 8 - perhaps because the icon bar on the right isn’t as full. For Kicad 9, they added icons for new features like Bezier curves, etc.
In both cases above, the Kicad window was maximized to fit the display.
Anyway, am I missing something simple or does this sound like a bug? If it’s a bug, I’ll submit one. If I’m missing something simple, please pass the humble pie.
I count column of 22 icons on your screenshot, while my KiCad V8 only has 10 icons.
But also, your first screenshot is 1918 x 1080 pixels (size selected by hand?) and this probably should be enough. The icons on the buttons on your screenshot are however bigger then in my KiCad V8. In the screenshot below, the left is from your screenshot, while the right is from my KiCad V8 (Linux Mint).
Thanks to both of you for the input. My screenshots were indeed sized by hand - I used Screen Rec to size the windows myself.
FWIW, my external monitor is 1920x1080 & my laptop screen is 1920x1200. Original windows settings for scale were 100% & 125% respectively.
I separately tried each of the two suggestions (setting the icon size in Kicad vs. setting Windows display to 100% instead of 125%). Both of them fixed the disappearing measurement tool, so thanks for that. Unfortunately, the icons and/or text get pretty small and I may just choose to live with the problem. I can always use the hotkey Shft+Ctrl+M. But I often found myself accessing it with the mouse.
Hey thanks for the heads-up that this bug has already been submitted. I wasn’t aware of that. I will keep an eye on it.
Unfortunately I can’t vote for it because I’m effectively locked out of my gitlab account. The verification code gitlab sends for added security isn’t showing up in my inbox, junk mail, etc. Others have experienced this as well, so it’s a known issue. Unfortunately it hasn’t been resolved.
Sorry - didn’t mean to offend. I thought the gitlab site was where the ‘Report bug’ button on Kicad takes you. I was only intending to note that it had been officially submitted to gitlab rather than simply mentioning it on the forum.
I don’t think that’s a good argument. The problem also depends on the screen dpi and icon size, so the resolution alone is not a criterion that makes the problem appear or not.
Also, more importantly, I don’t think you’re exprected to only use the application full-screen. Having multiple windows open side-by-side is a common usecase. It’s probably not a bug, but it’s definitely a missing function/feature, that can be reasonably expected.
Most GUI tooltips would implement the overflow menu automatically. Kinda like how every textbox automatically supports copy/paste. If a textbox were missing that functionality, it could be borderline a bug, depending on if there was a bug that prevented the default functionality to appear, or if the developer simply missed adding that expected feature.
and yes I also agree it would be a nice feature to be added.