For years KWin has offered modifier-only shortcut handling via an obscure and undocumented method of editing the kwinrc file. Well, no more: in Plasma 6.1, KDE’s shortcut choosers will accept lone modifier keys natively! This makes it much easier to, for example, re-bind what the Meta key does: now you can easily make it open Overview, KRunner, or anything else simply by assigning it directly to that something else. This work required extensive re-plumbing throughout KDE’s software stack and was undertaken by Yifan Zhu, closing multiple Bugzilla tickets in the process—some fairly old. Thanks a lot, Yifan! (Link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5, and link 6)
But that’s not all! Though bug-fixing is eternal, we’ve largely gotten over the hump for Plasma 6.0, and I’ve noticed that features and UI improvement have occupied more of people’s attention recently. So let’s start with a much-requested one…
New Features
Spectacle regains a Crop tool, this time integrated internally rather than coming from a 3rd-party annotations library. This also happens to fix a related bug (Noah Davis, Spectacle 24.05. Link 1 and link 2):
For laptops with RGB-backlit keyboards, Plasma has gained the ability to keep the backlight color in sync with the active accent color! And support for custom colors is coming too (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 6.1. Link 1 and link 2):
The new automatic crash reporter now gives you the option to let it always download debug symbols in the background to improve the crash reports it generates (Harald Sitter, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Going along with the theme of modifier-only shortcuts, you can now make an unused mouse button simulate pressing a modifier key alone (David Redondo, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Even though Snaps are supposed to auto-update, Discover has gained the ability to let you manually update them if desired (Kevin Ottens, Plasma 6.1. Link)
UI Improvements
Dolphin now shows a visible error message when you use a keyboard shortcut to trigger an action that can’t be performed in the current context, like cutting a file in a read-only folder (Jin Liu, Dolphin 24.05. Link):
In Elisa, you can now switch between list and grid views as you see fit (Jack Hill, Elisa 24.05. Link):
In Elisa, you can now search for albums on the Tracks page (Karl Hoffman, Elisa 24.05. Link)
You can now select multiple wallpapers in Plasma’s “add new wallpaper” dialog (Sahil Arora, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Changed Breeze-themed radio buttons and checkboxes to use the “Button” color role as most other interactive UI elements already do, which not only improves visual consistency, but also fixes a visual glitch in QtQuick-based software where these UI elements would have the wrong color some of the time (Akseli Lahtinen, Frameworks 6.1 and Plasma 6.1. Link 1, link 2, and link 3)
List headers in Kickoff now use the standard list header style seen in QtQuick-based KDE apps, which also necessitated creating a version of that component suitable for Plasma, so expect to see it showing up in more places too (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.1. Link 1 and link 2):
The Plasma Digital Clock widget’s holiday list picker no longer elides long text; instead it wraps the text, since there’s plenty of space to show it in the long already-scrollable list (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Bug Fixes
Okular no longer asks you for a password to open encrypted PDF documents where the encryption isn’t actually applied to simply opening them (Nicolas Fella, sponsored by TU Dresden, Okular 24.02.2. Link)
Fixed a set of related crashes in Plasma that appear to have been a subtle side effect of the recent fix to make apps in Kickoff’s favorite grid disappear immediately when uninstalled (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Fixed another case where Plasma could crash when you plugged in a new screen (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4. Link 1 and link 2)
Fixed a rare Plasma crash that could happen when clicking on certain System Tray icons (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Fixed a case where Spectacle could crash after ending a screen recording when using certain GPU hardware (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Fixed bug that had broken the ability to log out within 60 seconds of logging in when using Plasma’s systemd-enabled startup process (Harald Sitter, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Fixed an issue that caused two-finger touchpad taps on the Task Manager to not open a context menu with certain, shall we say, “less than premium” touchpad hardware (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Contributed code hardening for four additional crashes picked up by KDE’s automatic crash reporting system, which as you can tell is proving quite useful! (Fushan Wen again; he’s just that amazing! Plasma 6.0.4. Link 1, link 2, link 3, and link 4)
Fixed the date information in the tooltips of various clock widgets not being localized correctly (Albert Astals Cid, Plasma 6.0.4. Link 1 and link 2)
Fixed a variety of additional weird issues with mouse cursors in video games on Wayland (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.1. Link 1 and link 2)
Fixed some visual glitches that could happen on Wayland when you resize certain types of window that open in a maximized state (Ser Freeman, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Other bug information of note:
- 2 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 4 last week). Current list of bugs
- 34 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 35 last week). Current list of bugs
- 145 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed over the last week! Full list of bugs
Performance & Technical
Spectacle is now less likely to show up in its own screenshots when used outside of Plasma and KWin on X11 (Konstantin Kharlamov, Spectacle 24.02.2. Link)
By default, Partition manager now mounts volumes (other than / and /home) with the nofail flag so they don’t block boot-up when not available for some reason (Thomas Bertels, Partition Manager 24.05. Link)
Fixed a memory leak in Plasma’s Networks widget (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Custom QML layouts for lock screens in Global Themes are no longer honored, as this is too security-sensitive (Marco Martin, Plasma 6.1. Link 1, link 2, link 3, and link 4)
The Dialog Parent effect (the thing that makes windows get dimmed when a child dialog window is open) now works on Wayland (Carlos Garnacho and David Redondo, Plasma 6.1 with Qt 6.8. Link)
Did a major code-quality overhaul of the Plasma Digital Clock and Calendar widgets, which fixed a bunch of fragility, warnings, and some minor glitches, with more to come soon (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Automation & Systematization
Wrote a tutorial on how to publish your Android-compatible KDE app on the Google Play store (Ingo Klöcker, 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
KDE has become important in the world, and your time and labor have helped to bring it there! But as we grow, it’s going to be equally important that this stream of labor be made sustainable, which primarily means paying for it. Right now the vast majority of KDE runs on labor that KDE e.V. didn’t pay for, and that’s a problem. We’ve taken steps to change this with paid technical contractors—but those steps are small due to limited financial resources. If you’d like to help change that, consider donating today!
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!
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
This should say “x bugs were closed, y bugs were opened, n bugs open as for now”
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The rgb laptop keyboard is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while. I need to run out and get an rgb laptop right away!
as I’m typing this, though, I realize I DO have a regular rgb keyboard. I guess those laptop designs must be simpler / more consistent? I know there are other projects that try to tackle all the various 3rd party rgb stuff and it seems kinda overwhelming.
anyway, whatever, that’s awesome.
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Upgrading to 6.03 from 6.02 was a very painful experience for me.
At random times when minimising an app in Wayland, the app remained painted on the desktop, even if it was closed.
i could right click on it and have the desktop context menu as normal, but Dolphin, VLC or whatever app remained painted there. Killing the app or restarting plasmashell didn’t help.
The only way to fix it was to disable Translucency and Blur effect. Also they are buggy since forever on KDE as they don’t work for right click context menu on desktop..
i love KDE and use it daily at home and work, but I am plagued with simple random bugs everyday.
Hope most of them will be fixed
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Have you reported those bugs?
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expensive -> extensive?
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Hah yeah, oops. Fixed now. Thanks.
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There is still a little visual glitch in KDE Plasma 6: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=463845
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Congratulations! We’ve reached 🚀 ~Mars~ exactly 💯0 new KDE members!!
https://imgur.com/a/lX47pEK (Screenshot)
But let’s not stop here but get further to the outer spheres, nothing is impossible, the 2000 is already visible as a small blurry dot in the far distance!
Therefore just check in and let’s lift further off: https://kde.org/fundraisers/plasma6member/
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Yeah, this is really amazing! 6 months ago we had 52 supporting members—a pretty pitifully low figure. 1000 is wonderful, but we can’t stop there!
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Love how you guys just constantly keep hammering away them bugs week after week and keep refining things all over the place. I think by version 6.1 the craptalkers will shut up.
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Looking at the screenshot of the search function, how cool would it be to have thumbnails of the images and embedded artwork of the music files showing? Very cool. That’s how cool. BTW, the text seems to be a little bit too high up for the results, in comparison to the icons. Maybe it’s the icons that are placed a bit too low..
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How to use three fingers for gestures? it is easier than four.
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You can’t; it’s not configurable yet.
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This is not what the patch does. It actually makes screenshots slower to prevent bugs.
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Oh, I misunderstood. Can you explain it to me so I can edit the post accordingly?
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The user friendly explanation is that you’re less likely to get spectacle showing up inside its own screenshots on X11 when not using KWin.
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You made a promise last week…
… and you leave me shaking by not even mentioning this. I’m sure it’s at 99% now and you just didn’t want to tease more, but THE ANTICIPATION dude 😉
In all seriousness, been on Plasma 6 for a week now, it’s mostly a good experience! My only gripe is that we lost the walk-through-desktops feature (alt-tab behavior but for virtual desktops) but I’m sure a solution will come, there are plenty other users that need to handle their virtual desktops without having to use a mouse. Oh, and Firefox no longer restores its windows on the right virtual desktop. And with 6 virtual desktops and about 30 Firefox windows, that’s a pain whenever I log in 😉
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Real modifier-only shortcuts and bringing back cropping in Spectacle didn’t do it for you? Tough crowd! 😅
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Meaning to reply to Nate here – yeah, those are pretty darn big. Esp the crop for Spectacle, boy, was that missing! Accepted. Just know that you created high expectations and you should tell us when we’re expected to consider them fulfilled 🙈😬
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Even though Snaps are supposed to auto-update, Discover has gained the ability to let you manually update them if desired (Kevin Ottens, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Does this mean snaps with updates will show up in Discover (under updates)?
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That’s great to hear about being able to remap modifier-only shortcuts, that was something that I remember griping about over a decade ago when I came to KDE, but just got used to it being the way it is. Must’ve been a ton of work to get that right.
“In Elisa, you can now switch between list and grid views as you see fit.” … excellent!!! Much better for me.
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I wonder if this RGB keyboard feature will work with Tuxedo laptop as well and how it will be applied, when wallpapers have various, unclear colors, while RGP have defined, strong ones and I’m not sure if the keyboard can create mix of them. More subtle colors on the keyboard are nicer then vivid gree-red, that are too disturbing for me. Anyway, I’m curious to test it when Plasma 6.1 will come up.
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In case this is what you meant: The feature will only work for keyboards with full 8 bit color support and not if they can do only either red/green/blue.
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(See also my other comment which was meant as a reply to yours)
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The feature was in fact developed on a Tuxedo laptop 🙂 and specifically with Tuxedo laptos in mind, so yes.
What is seen in the screencast is the new feature to sync the keyboard color with the Plasma accent color in combination with the already existing feature to automatically extract an accent color from the wallpaper. This accent color is the same one that is also used throughout the color scheme as as the highlight color on buttons etc., and you can now opt to also apply that color to the keyboard. The wallpaper accent color algorithm extracts the dominant color from a wallpaper, and this is applied as a single color on all keys.
If you are not satisfied with the result, you can either already pick a custom accent color to use in your color scheme instead of extracting it from the wallpaper, or (but this is not merged yet) you will be able to choose a custom color different from the color scheme’s accent color to use for the keyboard. I found the combination of the two to turn out pretty good though.
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Thanks for clarification @nclarius.
I can enable rainbow like effect with different hues (while the rest of the them present one, strong, vivid color), so I guess my keyboard will support that. However, accent colors from wallpaper feature is not working that great for me, because I use Bing picture of the day. This means, all wallpapers are nature wallpapers and moast accent colors end as a dirty shade of green or yellow, which are OK, but a bit boring over time, as they repeat over and over, and no fun colors show up. However, for kayboard color, it might turn out OK, because dimmed, dirty colors may be less distracting and be a nice replacement for a white one, which is practically the only color I use on a daily basis.
Ironically, with that kind of color capabilities on the keyboard, there is no software utility from TUXEDO to customize it. There are just presets that I can switch through with FN key, but they are too in the face. I would prefer to colorize certain rows or groups of keys in more subtle way, while the existing effects are like a Christmas Tree or Techno Party, not usable for daily usage.
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