Official website where all the writing here is copy/pasted from:
https://www.compiz.org/
https://wiki.compiz.org/




General Options contain settings that can affect the appearance and behaviour of Compiz overall. These settings are not specific to any plugin, but can be configured the same way as a plugin using the CompizConfig Settings Manager. Compiz replaces your desktop environment's standard window manager when it runs, so this is the place to look for shortcuts that stop working, viewports that suddenly change in size and quantity, or other window manager behaviour that suddenly changes when Compiz is running.


The Magnifier plugin zooms in a portion of the screen around the mouse cursor.
The Magnifier creates a small window of customizable size that shows a zoomed image of the area around the mouse cursor. Magnifier can also put this image inside of an overlaid image, such as one of a magnifying glass, or use a fisheye distortion effect to create the zoom.


The Brightness and Saturation plugin allows you to make your windows dimmer as well as fade their colours to grayscale.
Brightness and saturation is operated by pressing key bindings when the window whose brightness or saturation you wish to change is focused, or mouse bindings when your cursor is hovering over the target window.


The Desktop Cube plugin is one of three choices for using multiple workspaces, along with Desktop Wall and Desktop Plane. Using the cube, four viewports (by default) form the side faces of the cube; the top and bottom are reserved for caps. It is part of Compiz, although several plugins in Compiz Fusion extend the functionality of the cube.
Skydome
- The skydome is an optional background for the virtual space in which the cube is located (visible when the cube is zoomed out, such as when it is being rotated with the mouse). If you choose to enable the skydome, you can select your own Skydome Image to be placed behind the cube. Or, if you prefer, you can set it to a simple gradient by selecting the Skydome Gradient Start and End colours for the gradient. Additionally, you can enable the Animate Skydome option, which makes the image or gradient stretch into a 360° panorama, the viewing angle shifting as you rotate the cube.
Transparency
- The Transparent Cube section contains options for changing the cube's opacity. You can set its Opacity During Rotation, its Opacity When Not Rotating, and the Fade Time when transitioning between the two opacities. You can also enable Transparency Only on Mouse Rotate so that the cube does not change opacity when rotated using keyboard shortcuts, or when it is automatically rotated to show a newly focused window on a different viewport. Note that if you set your desktop cube to be transparent when not rotating, you may experience slight visual glitches with some animations and effects. The Lighting option under General Options -> Display Settings can also affect the appearance of windows on other sides of the cube.


The Expo plugin allows you to zoom out and see all viewports at once, as well as re-arrange windows between them. It is also useful for visually identifying a viewport before switching to it, as all windows are shown as scaled, live previews.
Effects
- By default, windows will also have the Wobbly effect while being moved. To disable this, enable the Immediate moves option under the Behaviour tab.
You can also choose from two additional distortion options: The Tilt view option, which tilts the right end of the arranged viewport grid further away, giving a sense of 3D, or the Curved view option, which curves the edges of the viewport grid towards the user. If the reflection is disabled, and either Tilt view or Curved view is also disabled, then the view will fill the entire screen. Otherwise, it will be slightly smaller, with a black margin around it. The Aspect Ratio only applies if the aspect ratio of the viewport grid does not match the aspect ratio of the screen, that is, if the Horizontal and Vertical Virtual Size (set in General Options) are not equal. When it does apply, it determines how much to stretch the viewports relative to the screen size.
Reflection
- The reflection effect is enabled in CCSM via the Reflection checkbox in the Expo settings. Some aspects of its appearance can also be adjusted:
Ground color (near/far): The ground is the reflective surface beneath the viewports. It is coloured with a vertical gradient which starts with the far colour (at the horizon/far edge) and ends with the near colour (at the bottom edge of the screen).
Ground size: the height of the ground, relative to the height of the screen.
Reflection intensity: the opacity of the reflection.
Reflection Scale: the scale factor of the reflection.
Animations
- The following transition effects are available:
Zoom - simply zooms out from the current viewport until all viewports are visible.
Fade and Zoom - adds a fade-out transition from the currently displayed screen while also zooming out.
Vortex - fades out while the viewports swirl as though in a vortex before arranging themselves into the grid formation.


Fade to Desktop adds a smooth opacity fading transition to windows when the Show Desktop action (set in General Options) is triggered. If this plugin is active, then all windows will minimize with the fading effect on this event, instead of animating according to the settings for the Animation plugin. They will also fade back in if Show Desktop is triggered again.


The Rotate Cube plugin provides the ability to rotate the cube created by Desktop Cube. Without it, the Desktop Cube plugin is mostly useless.


The 3D Windows plugin causes the windows on the cube to lift off the cube at different levels as the cube shrinks away from them to show the space between them and their stacking order. The shrinking cube is an updated effect to compensate for clipping of the windows with the Cube Reflection plugin when rotating off axis.




The Animations plugin provides visual effects for window actions. You can use it to assign different effects to windows for Create, Close, Minimize (and Unminimize), Shade and Focus events. You can also adjust the settings for each effect. Animation uses Window Matching to display different animations for different windows. (Please see the page on Window Matching for a usage guide.)


The Blur Windows plugin uses pixel shaders to blur the screen area behind translucent (regions of) windows, and also to blur the windows themselves. Its extensible interface allows for future shaders to be added. Using Blur - The three types of blur effects -- alpha blur, focus blur and pulse effect -- use the same blur filter, as defined in the Blur Filter settings.


The Cube Atlantis plugin adds fish from the Atlantis screensaver to the inside of the cube. It is a Compiz Fusion plugin, but isn't yet a part of any plugin package. They are only visible if you enable Cube Transparency.


The Cube Gears plugin places the gears from glxgears (a standalone GLX animation, not part of Compiz) inside the cube. It is part of Compiz Fusion's plugins-extra package. As with Cube Atlantis, they are only visible when using a transparent cube.


The Cube Reflection and Deformation plugin, also known as cubeaddon, offers cube reflections, two optional deformation modes (Cylinder and Sphere), and cube caps functionality, which draws the top and bottom faces of the (optionally deformed) cube.
Cube Caps
- Although the Desktop Cube plugin can place an image on the top face of the cube, the Cube Caps implementation in this plugin provides more versatility, as well as allowing for correctly shaped cube caps when using the Cylinder or Sphere deformations. Unlike with the implementation in Desktop Cube, both the top and bottom caps can be set. Different background colours can also be set for each cap; the caps can even be disabled altogether.
Deformation
- The deformation mode can be either Cylinder or Sphere. The cylinder resembles a disc, with circular caps, while the sphere is completely round, including the caps, which are convex to complete the spherical form.
Reflection - This adds a reflective surface below the cube, similar to the effect in Expo and Shift Switcher. There are several reflection modes available, each with varying effects on the mechanics of rotation.


The Motion Blur plugin offers a motion blur effect, achieved by blending frames together into an animated time-lapse image.
The motion blur effect can be toggled via <Control>F12.


Firepaint is an eye candy plugin which enables the user to draw on the screen with animated fire particles, similar to those from the Burn effect.


The Reflection plugin is a window border decoration option that works in conjunction with Emerald Theme Manager. It allows images (containing, for example, textures or solid colors) to be used on a translucent or transparent emerald theme as an overlay, creating the appearance of a "reflection" on the surface of the window. The plugin accepts PNG, JPG, or SVG images.


Water is an eye candy plugin which offers the ability to create water ripple effects on the screen.
Drawing trails with the mouse - To begin drawing trails of ripples on the screen with the mouse, hold down<Control><Super> and move the mouse. The mouse will continue to draw trails for as long as the keys are held down.
The rain effect causes random raindrops to appear on the screen, which behaves like the surface of a pond. It can be toggled on and off.


The Decoration plugin provides a window border for your windows. The decoration plugin is essentially useless without a window decorator, and you need one running so that the decoration plugin can render the window border.
Decorators - So far, there are 3 different decorators that you may use with the decoration plugin.
GTK Window Decorator for use with Metacity themes.
KDE Window Decorator for use with KWin themes.
Emerald - A custom Compiz window themer.


The Wobbly Windows plugin provides what is probably the most notorious effect Compiz was initially known for: windows that move like gelatin, with a spring-and-friction model.
The Wobbly Windows is enabled by default, so it may be useful as a basic indicator that Compiz has been successfully launched.
A window can be moved by clicking and dragging its titlebar, or by holding down Alt and clicking and dragging any part of the window. Because Wobbly Windows uses grid geometry and physics, the window will wobble and stretch in different ways depending on which region is "grabbed".
Maximizing a window will cause its corners to snap immediately to the corners of the screen, while the rest of the window stretches, springs and wobbles from the movement.
Clicking and dragging on the corners and edges of a maximized window will cause it to bend or peel back, revealing anything behind it.
Holding down Shift while moving a window will cause it to snap and resist movement against the edges of other windows and of the screen.


The Extra WM Actions plugin provides some extra window management actions that you can toggle with a keystroke, such as fullscreen and sticky.


The Move Window plugin provides the basic functionality to move windows.






The Application Switcher, Ring Switcher, and Shift Switcher allow you to flip between your windows using your keyboard, with some nice 3D effects. Note that these are three completely separate plugins which essentially perform the same functionality; hence, these three plugins have been placed together on this page.
The Application Switcher provides the same functionality as the traditional GNOME and KDE <Alt>Tab switcher, but uses live window thumbnails to show its previews.
The Ring Switcher plugin allows you to flip through your windows in a ring. This has advantages over the normal switcher as you can see more windows at once.
The Shift Switcher provides the same window switching functionality, but with some neater effects, Flip and Cover.


The Scale plugin scales down your windows and allows you to select via mouse the one you want to be focused and raised. It is similar in functionality to the Apple Mac OS X Exposé effect. The functionality of the Scale plugin can be extended by other plugins.


The Snapping Windows plugin provides basic functionality to stick the edges of windows and screen to each other with some degree of force. Use this if you want to be able to snap your windows to other windows or screen edges, but have disabled the Wobbly plugin.