This week in KDE: Major bugfixing and screen recording in Spectacle

The team is in full-on bugfixing mode and we’re knocking out issues left and right in preparation for the Plasma 5.27 final release! I bet everyone reading can find at least one fix for a bug that’s annoyed them at some point, because we have a few big ones here! We want this to be the best, most stable, most awesome Plasma 5 release ever, so folks are happy with it for 8 months or longer before Plasma 6 drops.

We did manage to sneak in some feature work too (you know us!) including screen recording for Spectacle! Check it out:

New Features

Spectacle now includes video recording on Wayland! (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Spectacle 23.04. Link):

OpenConnect VPNs now support double-authentication mode using SAML authentication (Rahul Rameshbabu, Plasma 6.0, Link)

By default, the tooltips for all of our various clock widgets now show seconds, just in case you need to see them quickly, but don’t want the overhead of manually turning on the display of settings. This is also configurable, of course! (Alessio Bonfiglio, Plasma 6.0. Link 1 and link 2)

When you’re using the Unsplash Picture of the Day wallpaper plugin, you can now choose to only show results from the “Cyber” category (David Elliott, Plasma 6.0. Link):

User Interface Improvements

When you have the filter bar open in Dolphin and it’s filtering the view, clicking on a Places panel for the current view entry now resets the filter and shows you everything (Serg Podtynnyi, Dolphin 23.04. Link)

Spectacle’s “Capture the current pop-up only” checkbox is no longer present on Wayland, because it doesn’t do anything there (me: Nate Graham, Spectacle 23.04. Link)

System Settings’ Icons page now shows a “Help” button that takes you to the documentation for it (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 5.27. Link)

It’s now possible to delete Global Themes right from the grid view in System Settings, without having to go into the “Get New Global Themes…” window to do it, just like in most other System Settings pages for choosing visual theming options (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0 Link)

Scrolling over scrollbars (not dragging them; actually scrolling over them) now works consistently in QtQuick-based apps. And they also look better when using a right-to-left language, to! (Ivan Tkachenko, Frameworks 5.103. Link 1 and link 2)

Significant Bugfixes

(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, Plasma 5.27 beta bugs, etc.)

Spectacle FINALLY no longer includes itself in screenshots taken without a 1-second or longer delay using the main window (David Redondo, Spectacle 23.04. Link)

Under certain circumstances, Discover no longer always crashes on launch unless its cache folder (~/.cache/discover) is empty (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.24.8. Link)

KWin can no longer sometimes crash when you rapidly resize a quick-tiled window adjacent to another quick-tiled window (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.27. Link)

Fixed a recent regression in the Plasma Wayland session that could cause GTK apps to succeed at sending clipboard data to Plasma only once and then fail on all subsequent times (David Redondo, Plasma 5.27. Link)

GTK4 apps are no longer double-scaled when using screen scaling (Luca Bacci, Plasma 5.27. Link)

When you’ve set up a window rule that wants to move a window to a screen location that doesn’t exist (e.g. because that location is on another screen that’s no longer connected), it will no longer be moved to an offscreen location where it’s open but inaccessible; instead the rule simply doesn’t execute at all until the location it wants to move the window to exists again (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27. Link)

When an app requests that the system inhibit the system from going to sleep–and only from going to sleep–Plasma no longer inappropriately inhibits screen locking too (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.27. Link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, fixed another bug that could cause you to be unable to choose a screen resolution other than your screen’s native resolution (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.27. Link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, GTK2 apps minimized to their System Tray icon can now be restored (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27. Link)

Fixed a variety of subtle bugs in desktop widget positioning, so your widgets should FINALLY no longer move slightly every time you start the system (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.27. Link)

In the Notifications widget, the “show more” text FINALLY no longer ever overlaps other notifications in the history (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.27. Link)

If you’ve resized the Kickoff Application Launcher’s popup, searching in it no longer sometimes resets it to the default size (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27. Link)

After installing a new font, clicking on the “OK” button for the “job’s finished” message now makes it go away as expected (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27. Link)

The entire system will no longer sometimes (but especially when using the Btrfs filesystem) hang while Flatpak apps are installed or updated (David Redondo, Frameworks 5.103. Link)

Fixed a whole buttload of weird, random-seeming clipboard issues in the Plasma Wayland session (David Redondo, Frameworks 5.103. Link 1, link 2, link 3, and link 4)

Other bug-related information of interest:

• 9 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 10 last week). Current list of bugs
• 51 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 53 last week). Current list of bugs
• 155 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

Automation & Systematization

Added UI tests to the Kirigami.Avatar component to make sure it always works as expected when clicked or tapped (Ivan Tkachenko, Frameworks 5.103. 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

Please test the Plasma 5.27 beta! Bug reports filed against the beta version (5.26.90) get looked at and prioritized. It really helps. And of course, if you’re a developer, fixing those bugs is massively impactful too. You might also want to check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly!

Otherwise, visit 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!

And finally, KDE can’t work without financial support, so consider making a donation today!