This week in KDE: it’s the little things that count

This week a lot of people made a lot of fixes and improvements to a lot of small-to-medium yet longstanding issues. I challenge any reader to read through the whole post and not find any instances of things that had been annoying them being fixed this week!

New Features

Skanpage now lets you customize its keyboard shortcuts (Someone going by the pseudonym “John Doe”, Skanpage 23.08. Link)

Kate now includes a QML language server option when using Qt 6 (Magnus Groß, Kate 23.08. Link)

User Interface Improvements

Gwenview now only inhibits sleep and screen locking during a slideshow while the app is in the foreground (Nikita Karpei, Gwenview 23.04. Link)

Star rating widgets in Elisa are now focusable and usable with the keyboard (Ivan Tkachenko, Elisa 23.08. Link)

KDialog dialogs no longer append ” – KDialog” to their window titles when showing a custom user-provided title (me: Nate Graham, KDialog 23.08. Link)

Energy usage graphs in Info Center are now a bit more readable when using a dark color scheme (Prajna Sariputra, Plasma 5.27.4. Link):

Discover no longer sends notifications for available updates when it’s already running (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.27.4. Link)

Discover now provides better feedback in the main window when asked to delete user data for no-longer-installed Flatpak apps (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 6.0. Link)

In Info Center, page footers have now been moved to the header area for a more streamlined appearance (Oliver Beard, Plasma 6.0. Link):

Notifications sent by Flatpak apps no longer play a sound by default (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.105. Link)

The portal-based app chooser window can now additionally match apps based on their generic names and the filename extensions and mimetypes they support (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0. Link):

In various Kirigami-based apps, menus with mutually exclusive items now show the correct control–a radio button rather than a checkbox (Ivan Tkachenko, Elisa 23.04 and Frameworks 5.105. Link 1 and link 2):

Installed Flatpak apps from Flathub now respect the Breeze icon theme (Alois Wohlschlager, Frameworks 5.105. Link)

Significant Bugfixes

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

Fixed the common and infamous crash in Gwenview when quickly rotating an image multiple times in a row (Nikita Karpei, Gwenview 23.04. Link)

Pressing the PrintScreen key to take a new screenshot while Spectacle’s main window is already running now works again (Noah Davis, Spectacle 23.04. Link)

When browsing files on an Android devices using the mtp: protocol, it’s now possible to modify files on the device (Harald Sitter, kio-extras 23.08. Link)

Fixed a common source of KWin crashes in the Plasma Wayland session when certain external screens turn off on their own after being disabled and re-enabled by something (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.27.4. Link)

Fixed a source of kded5 crashes when switching screens (Luca Bacci, Plasma 5.27.4. Link)

Discover is now massively faster and more responsive when a lot of system updates are available (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.27.4. Link)

When a GTK headerbar app themed with the Breeze GTK theme is maximized, the top-right-most pixel in the screen now triggers its close button (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.4. Link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, the scroll speed setting now works again (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27.4. Link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, switching global themes now immediately updates the colors of running GTK apps, without the need to restart them (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.4. Link)

The Baloo file indexing service will no longer pointlessly try to index files in Python virtualenv folders (Ayush Mishra, Frameworks 5.105. Link)

Other bug-related information of interest:

• 12 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 13 last week). Current list of bugs
• 48 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 49 last week). Current list of bugs
• 101 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

Changes not in KDE that affect KDE

Chromium now supports the fractional-scale-v1 Wayland protocol, which will allow native Wayland apps based on Chromium (e.g. Chrome and Electron apps) to eventually have proper fractional scale support in the Plasma Wayland session (Thomas Anderson, Chromium 113. Link)

Blender now also supports the fractional-scale-v1 Wayland protocol! (Campbell Barton, 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, consider working on known Plasma 5.27 regressions! 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 other 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! This stuff ain’t cheap and KDE e.V. has ambitious hiring goals. We can’t meet them without your generous donations!