It sounds like you’re logging into i3 directly, which is usable, but I much prefer Xfce + i3, which gives you all the tiling and keyboard shortcuts of i3 with the UI elements from the default Xfce Qubes interface. It’s possible to use i3 on its own in Qubes, I’ve tried, it’s just not nearly as usable in my opinion as it is alongside Xfce.
If you want to try Xfce with i3, you can follow the guide on my Github that I linked above. I tried to make it as detailed and clear for new users as I could.
I haven’t tried i3 with KDE, so I have no idea what the setup for that would look like, but I imagine it’s similar doing it with Xfce.
When you set i3 up as a window manager for a desktop environment like Xfce or KDE, then if you’ve set it up correctly, you should be selecting “KDE” or “Xfce” for the session at the login screen. If you’re selecting “i3”, then you’re just getting pure i3, and you won’t have any of the standard Qubes UI elements easily available (which is what it sounds like you’re describing).
I would recommend also reading the i3 User’s Guide if you’re new to it, because it’s a pretty steep learning curve if you’re coming from regular desktop environments. i3: i3 User’s Guide
I already thought that I should select XFCE but I followed the tutorial except the last part (hiding the i3 bar) and XFCE is still the same, no i3 bar and Window Manager is still the same…
Edit:
After changing the Current Session Settings, I had to click “Save Session”… Now at next login I see XFCE Bar at the top and i3 Bar at the bottom… But still I see the SDDM Login Screen as Desktop Background…
You may need to change xconf-query settings in the command line to change the background, because the Desktop Settings dialog will no longer work without Xfwm. I’m not sure what the correct way to do it is, I haven’t had a need to. I’ll add to the Github if I find a way.
Unfortunately there is no icon at the top right area in my case… I like the Idea to fire up alt+space and type a keyword, been a long time user of tools like listary or ueli under windows for exact this… But after trying XFCE + i3 Window Manager I also love i3’s tiling capabilities… Maybe KDE + i3 would be the ultimate Desktop Experience for Keyboard Geeks 
Found this, but in our case we cannot set wallpaper to find the property to set…
Have you thought about a programmable (QMK/VIA) Macropad for i3 Shortcuts (so you have to only press one key instead of mod+shift+1 for example)?
Something like this (but there are many more with different key count):
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If you like keyboard shortcut customizability, then you’re in luck. Open up ~/.config/i3/config and take a look at the i3 documentation on configuring that file. It’s trivially easy to set up shortcuts in i3 using that file. But if I were you, I’d make sure you disable all keyboard shortcuts in KDE or Xfce, because you need the ones in i3 config to work, and you should be able to recreate any shortcuts from KDE/Xfce in that config file.
config docs: i3: i3 User’s Guide
For instance, coming from plain i3, I’m used to $mod+d to bring up the D-Menu, but when i switched to Xfce+i3 I switched that shortcut to launch the xfce4-appfinder instead so the muscle memory remains the same to bring up Xfce’s equivalent (and I kept $mod+shift+d in case I need the D-Menu for something. I also changed the default i3 movement keybindings from jkl; to hjkl to match vim keybindings (it seems crazy to me that that’s not the default for i3). You can set it up to do pretty much anything you want with keyboard shortcuts, just be careful about conflicts with certain programs (for instance, you should probably leave ctrl+shift+c & ctrl+shift+v alone for instance so you don’t interfere with the defaults for inter-VM copy/paste).
Great, you mean:
h: left
j: down
k: up
l: right
Correct?
Applied all your suggestions, love it at first sight…
But got some color parse errors with the standard config…
And are you using split h shortcut? Cause it would conflict with mod+h for focus left…
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I should have mentioned that my i3 config is on the github repo (along with a little browser launcher script I wrote that goes with it), feel free to use it, or take ideas from it.
Actually that programmable pad is a great idea, because my main work machine is the Framework 16", which has an optional programmable pad you can replace the 10-key with. I may try that.
Suddenly I got a “Error: Could not parse JSON (lexical error: invalid char in json text.)” in the i3 bar instead of the system info… Do you know where this .json config resides?
I had that issue once, just reloading the i3 config fixed it ($mod+shift+r in the standard config). I think I read that’s json data coming from i3 to the bar, and sometimes it just doesn’t get up to speed in time after boot.
I guess you are right, in my case a reboot fixed it…
Will order such a programmable pad from aliexpress and will report!
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I adopted your config but start menu is moved mostly out of place (right side of screen)… I’m having a 1920x1080 screen…
Found it:
for_window [class="Qubes-app-menu"] move position 0 32
Fixed it for me…
Yep that’s it, I forgot about that. I moved my Qubes menu to the right side of my screen, so on my monitor it pops up over there, although it could be just about anywhere depending on your resolution.