I don't know a good way to explain this, but let's try.
Imagine that these icons...
...are all Google Chrome, but three different profiles. That is what I want.
What happens, whether creating .desktop files by hand or using kmenuedit is this:
- the launcher will respect the unique icons I choose
- I can force Chrome not to group the icons
- The panel icons still all show the default Chrome icon...
...instead of using the icon I chose for each instance.
The reason, for the interested, is that I want to have a work profile, a non-profit profile and a personal profile which all open and can be pinned with a unique icon.
I've gotten far enough that having separate menu entries with unique icons and individual .desktop files and ungrouped panel icons seems like progress, but Plasma seems to treat any instance that points at the final binary as "the same."
I have found numerous posts, however this one seems to want the same thing as me, and there have been a few others, all of which suggest it's not possible.
I can literally drag the shortcuts from the menu to the panel and produce unique icons that way, but when you click an icon that is NOT the chrome icon, it creates a new panel icon for the running program with the classic chrome icon anyway.