This week we merged support for re-binding the buttons of your multi-button mouse! You can assign buttons to keystrokes or keyboard shortcuts. Thanks to David Redondo, who implemented this for Plasma 5.26!

But that’s not all: we have much more, including a ton of work on Discover!

Other New Features

Elisa now defaults to saving playlist files with relative paths internally when the music files they reference live in the same folder–which is what most other music players do–but this can be changed if you prefer your playlist files to always contain absolute paths (Yerrey Dev, Elisa 22.12. Link)

Kate now has a keyboard macro feature! (Pablo Rauzy, Kate 22.12. Link)

Discover now lets you choose the frequency with which it notifies you about new updates! And within those frequencies, it’s now less aggressive about notifying you; no longer will you have the experience of updating, rebooting, and then immediately getting a notification about another update! Finally, this frequency UI also controls the frequency of automatic updates, if you’ve got those enabled. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.26. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3):

User Interface Improvements

Dolphin no longer pointlessly tells you “User canceled action” when you canceled an operation before confirming or completing it (Kai Uwe Broulik, Dolphin 22.08.1. Link)

When using Discover in mobile/narrow mode, clicking on a non-parent category in the drawer now automatically closes the drawer (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

System Settings’ Audio page now features a streamlined layout with smaller list items so that the whole view isn’t consumed by just a few audio devices (Oliver Beard, Plasma 5.26. Link):

The app selection dialog for sandboxed/portal-using apps now has significantly improved keyboard navigation (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26. Link):

Discover’s Updates page now shows you the correct installed version for Firmware updates and no longer shows you both the version number and branch name for Flatpak apps and runtimes, which was confusing in the case when the app’s branch name looked like a version number so it seemed like the app had two version numbers (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26. Link 1 Link 2):

Discover’s screenshots now also support animated images (Ellie Dent, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Your cursor position is now remembered across screen arrangements (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.26. Link)

The path bars in various KDE apps like Dolphin and Gwenview now accept relative paths (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.98. Link)

Kate and other KTextEditor-based apps now support various mouse-based methods of adding more cursors using the multicursor feature (Waqar Ahmad, KDE Frameworks 5.98. Link)

Significant Bugfixes

(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, etc.)

Filelight once again uses correct text colors with a dark color scheme and looks fine when using a fractional scale factor (Harald Sitter, Filelight 22.08.1. Link 1 Link 2)

Discover now inhibits automatic sleep while it’s installing apps or updates (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24.7. Link)

Discover no longer freezes on launch if you launch it without a network connection (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

System Settings’ Quick Settings page no longer sometimes shows duplicate items in the “Frequently Used” section (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

On Discover’s Updates page, Flatpak apps or runtimes no longer sometimes show the wrong version number (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.26. Link)

All KDE apps using KIO for file transfers now benefit from faster copy speeds, especially NFS which can be up to 3-4x faster! (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.98. Link)

Other bug-related information of interest:

• 46 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 51 last week). Current list of bugs
• 21 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 22 last week). Current list of bugs
• 118 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

Changes not in KDE that affect KDE

In the Plasma Wayland session, the standard Qt color picker dialog can now pick screen colors (Harald Sitter, Qt 6.5. Link)

Lowering the brightness to its lowest level when using an OLED with an Intel GPU screen no longer turns off the screen until restarting the machine (Jouni Högander, the next release of the Intel GPU drivers. Link)

…And everything else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

If you’re a developer, check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly! Otherwise, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Today something very cool landed: Dolphin now has a dedicated “Selection Mode” you can optionally use to make the process of selecting items easier with a touchscreen or when using the default single-click setting! It even shows a toolbar of contextually-relevant actions you can perform on the selected items! When using a mouse and keyboard, you can quickly enter and exit it by pressing the spacebar, pressing-and-holding on an item in the view, or using an item in the menu. It’s completely optional, so if you like selecting files the old fashioned way, you don’t have to use it at all. Big thanks to Felix Ernst, who implemented this feature for Dolphin 22.12!

…But that’s not all! Read on for more goodies!

Other New Features

Elisa now has a Full Screen mode (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 22.12. Link):

You can now change the way the system formats addresses, names, and phone numbers (Akseli, en, Plasma 5.26. Link):

When using a horizontal panel, Kickoff can now be configured to display text and/or remove the icon (Denys Madureira, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Kate now lets you customize the font that the document will be printed in, right there in the Print dialog (Christoph Cullmann, Frameworks 5.98. Link)

File thumbnailers are now capable of generating preview images for .arw RAW image files (Mirco Miranda, Frameworks 5.98. Link)

User Interface Improvements

Elisa’s “Artist” view now displays a grid of the artist’s albums, rather than a sea of nondescript identical icons (Stefan Vukanović, Elisa 22.12. Link):

When you enter shuffle mode in Elisa, the currently-playing song is now always the first one in the shuffled set of songs (Dmitry Kolesnikov, Elisa 22.12. Link)

When setting properties for KWin rules, the sheet containing the list of properties now stays open until explicitly dismissed (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.26. Link)

You can now launch executable files from file searches in Kicker, Kickoff, Overview etc; you’ll now see the standard “Open or execute?” dialog as you would expect (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26. Link)

The “Get New [thing]” windows now support animated GIFs used as images, so for example, you can now preview the effects of the fancy “Burn My Windows” KWin effects that were added recently (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.98. Link)

Significant Bugfixes

(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, longstanding issues etc.)

The circular timeout indicator for Plasma notifications is now fully visible no matter what your screen DPI and scale factor (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.24.7. Link)

Launchers other than Kickoff are once again capable of searching for files (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25.5)

Touch scrolling once again works in Kickoff (Noah Davis, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

Global shortcuts are now capable of launching apps that define command-line arguments in their .desktop files’ Exec= keys (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.98. Link)

Kirigami-based apps and views that use the common FormLayout component will no longer sometimes randomly freeze with certain combinations of fonts, font sizes, window sizes, and content sizes (Connor Carney, Frameworks 5.98. Link)

Other bug-related information of interest:

• 51 15-minute Plasma bugs (up from 50 last week). Current list of bugs
• 22 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 25 last week). Current list of bugs
• 99 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

Changes not in KDE that affect KDE

That Qt bug that causes vertical scrollbars to disappear in QtQuick-based apps has been fixed upstream, and we’ll soon be backporting it to our KDE Qt Patch Collection (Mitch Curtis, a Qt version coming to you soon. Link)

…And everything else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

If you’re a developer, check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly! Otherwise, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Though KDE’s goal-setting process is still ongoing, contributors have started working on Plasma accessibility in a major way! As of Plasma 5.26, all Plasma widgets will be fully compatible and usable with a screen reader, thanks to Fushan Wen with assistance from Harald Sitter! And there’s more to come too, plus lots of other great work:

New Features

It’s now possible to manage Samba shares’ permissions remotely! (Harald Sitter, kdenetwork-filesharing 22.12. Link)

The Plasma Network manager’s OpenConnect VPN plugin now supports the “F5,” “Fortinet,” and “Array” protocols (Enrique Melendez, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Kickoff now has a new non-default “Compact” mode that lets you see more items at the time. When using Touch Mode, compact mode is automatically disabled to ensure that Kickoff remains touch-friendly (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Global Themes can now change the order and arrangements of titlebar buttons and turn on or off the “Borderless Maximized Windows” setting which disables the titlebar for maximized windows. And you can also turn these on or off while applying a theme so configured on System Settings’ Global Themes page (Dominic Hayes, Plasma 5.26. Link)

By default, Picture of the Day wallpaper plugins don’t refresh while the system is using a metered network connection–but this can be turned back on if you want (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.26. Link):

It’s now possible to clear the Command Bar’s history (Eugene Popov, Frameworks 5.98. Link)

User Interface Improvements

Elisa can now open files from relative paths, not just absolute paths (Bharadwaj Raju, Elisa 22.08.1. Link)

When searching with KRunner, results from the “Software Center” category (which finds non-installed apps) are always lower than results from categories that show already-installed apps and settings pages (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.24.7. Link)

You can now use the Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut in the Clipboard applet’s Edit Mode page to save and return to the main page (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24.7. Link)

System Settings’ Night Color page now lets you use a map to choose a manual location, and shows a loading placeholder when using automatic location mode and the geolocation service is still working on geolocating you (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.26. Link 1 and Link 2):

The opening and closing animations for the Overview, Present Windows, and Desktop Grid effects now last longer and have a nicer easing curve, making them feel much smoother (Blake Sperling, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Significant Bugfixes

(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, etc.)

Switching your Global Theme to one that has its own color scheme now immediately changes the color in all running GTK apps that are being themed with the Breeze GTK theme (David Redondo, Plasma 5.24.7. Link)

Fixed a major regression in multi-monitor support for the Plasma Wayland session that could cause screens to display no output (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, certain apps like GIMP no longer sometimes fail to appear in the Task Manager while running (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

Fixed a prominent Task Manager-related crash (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

Other bug-related information of interest:

• 50 15-minute Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
• 25 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 26 last week). Current list of bugs
• 125 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

…And everything else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

If you’re a developer, check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly! Otherwise, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

I’ve started to worry that mentioning really small weird bugfixes week after week gives the impression that KDE software is buggier than it really is. The truth is that all responsibly maintained projects are constantly landing these kinds of maintenance bugfixes, so it’s probably a bit misleading to be talking about them all the time.

Instead, I’m going to try only mentioning the big, consequential bugfixes: the ones for bugs marked HI or VHI priority, that have with multiple duplicates, that are really significant in effect, etc. Hopefully this should improve the signal-to-noise ratio in the blog posts.

I’ll still mention new features and significant user interface improvements, of course.

Let me know what you think!

We continue chewing through bugs this week, and now I’m mentioning the “very high priority” Plasma bugs in addition to the “15 minute bugs” which are slightly lower priority. Plasma developers reading along are encouraged to prioritize the very high priority bugs. 🙂

Very high priority Plasma Bugs Resolved

Current number of bugs: 26, down from 29. 3 resolved:

System Monitor widgets no longer reset various settings to their default values after the system is restarted (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25.5)

It’s once again possible to select windows on other screens using the Present Windows and Overview effects (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.26)

Application Launcher widgets that you activate by pressing the Meta key no longer require that the Alt+F1 shortcut to be set, which should dramatically reduce instances where you press the Meta key and nothing happens. Also, now when you have more than one launcher that wants to open with the Meta key, it will open on whatever screen is considered active by KWin (David Redondo, Plasma 5.26)

Current list of bugs

15-Minute Plasma Bugs Resolved

Current number of bugs: 50, down from 51. 1 added and 2 resolved:

Kickoff no longer strangely pre-selects search results list items that aren’t the first ones after previously having selected the item in that position using the cursor the last time you searched for something (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25.5)

Hovering the cursor over an item in Kickoff no longer repeatedly re-selects it if you use the keyboard to select something else (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25.5)

Current list of bugs

New Features

You can now configure a keyboard shortcut to activate Present Windows showing only the windows from the current app that are on the current desktop (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.26)

User Interface Improvements

It’s now much easier to initially set up a folder for sharing with Samba, because the wizard now gives you detailed and actionable error messages (me: Nate Graham, kdenetwork-filesharing 22.12):

Wallpapers in the slideshow wallpaper grid are no longer selectable, since this isn’t a state that makes sense for them (Jin Liu, Plasma 5.25.4)

The Timer Plasma widget has received a big overhaul that fixes most of the open bugs and improves the UI to add a clickable start/stop button (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.26):

Searching for widgets in the Widget Explorer now also matches their keywords, providing another way to find what you’re looking for (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.26)

Menu shortcuts are now displayed in a subdued gray color, visually de-emphasizing them compared to the menu items’ text (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.26):

The Breeze icon theme now includes icons for Windows DLLs (Alexander Wilms, Frameworks 5.97)

Other Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

In Okular, it’s no longer possible to drag pop-up notes off the screen (Nikola Nikolic, Okular 22.12)

The first time KRunner is opened, it no longer oddly slides up from nowhere; now it always slides down from whatever’s above it as expected (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.24.7)

In the Plasma Wayland session, monitors no longer sometimes lose their names and become unable to be set as the primary one (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24.7)

The Breeze style once again respects the “Small Icons” size you can set in System Settings (Alexander Kernozhitsky, Plasma 5.25.5)

The KScreen screen handling service is now more lenient about detecting screens as unique, which should fix various weird screen-and-desktop-layout-related problems caused by hotplugging screens and docks where both the screen ID and connector ID change during the hotplug (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.26)

Setting the language in System Settings now updates the standard FreeDesktop org.freedesktop.Accounts.User.Language value which is used by Flatpak apps and lots of 3rd-party apps in general, so they should now use your preferred language as well (Han Young, Plasma 5.26)

…And everything else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! Tons of KDE apps whose development I don’t have time to follow aren’t represented here, and I also don’t mention backend refactoring, improved test coverage, and other changes that are generally not user-facing. If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

If you’re a developer, check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly!

Otherwise, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.