I have good news for those of you who are upset by KDE Neon moving to offline updates by default: we’ve made a GUI setting to turn it off (there was already a CLI setting). I get that the nerdy tech crowd is not super thrilled by this new more Windows 10-style update mode. But though you might find it annoying, it really does improve your system’s stability. I can point to literally hundreds of bug reports about problems caused entirely by not rebooting the computer after installing updates. However, in KDE we want you to be in control, so starting in Plasma 5.22, you’ll be able to enable or disable offline updates to suit your preference. This work was done by Aleix Pol Gonzalez:

Other New Features
The Global Menu widget now includes a Search field that you can use to quickly locate menu items! (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.22)
Discover has gained the ability to update distros using rpm-ostree, such as Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Kinoite (Mariam Fahmy, Plasma 5.22)
In the Plasma Wayland session, screen-casting will now enter “Do Not Disturb” mode by default (though this can be overridden, if desired) (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.22)
You can now set screens’ overscan values in the Plasma Wayland session (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.22)
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
Hugely improved Gwenview’s speed, responsiveness, and memory usage when loading and navigating large grid views, particularly for files located on network locations (Arjen Hiemstra, Gwenview 20.08)
Entering your password in the Networks applet no longer causes the networks list to re-arrange itself while you’re typing and sometimes send your password to the wrong network! This has been a problem for quite a while, and we tried various targeted fixes that never fully worked; this time we went for the nuclear option that should finally solve it once and for all! (Jan Grulich, Plasma 5.21.5)
The new Plasma System Monitor app no longer crashes when you select a new display style for any of the sensors (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.21.5)
Sending files to Bluetooth devices from Dolphin now works again (Egor Ignatov, Plasma 5.21.5)
Discover once again displays firmware updates for eligible devices (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.21.5)
It is now possible to specify a usergroup for OpenConnect VPNs (Aaron Barany, Plasma 5.21.5)
Long names in System Settings’ Users page no longer overflow (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.21.5)
Fixed one of the ways that KWin can crash when using a multi-GPU system (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.22)
In the Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer sometimes crashes when showing Task Manager thumbnails or ending a screen recording/streaming session (Alois Wohlschlager, Plasma 5.22)
Accented and dead keys now work in the Plasma Wayland session when the virtual keyboard is available (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22 with Qt 5.15.3 plus KDE’s backported patches)
The Present Windows effect now works in the Plasma Wayland session when activated from grouped Task Manager entries (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)
The new S.M.A.R.T. monitoring system no longer erroneously warns you that VirtualBox disks are broken when they’re not, or tracks the status for devices without S.M.A.R.T. support at all (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.22)
When using the new Systemd startup feature, processes that crash at logout or login can no longer either block re-login, or fail to get started at login in circumstances under which they would otherwise launch normally (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22)
System Settings no longer sometimes crashes when navigating from one QtQuick-based page to another (Jan Blackquill, Frameworks 5.82)
List Items throughout QtQuick-based KDE software no longer exhibit excessive left padding for their icons (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.82)
User Interface Improvements
Digital signatures in Okular are no longer drawn with scary red text (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 21.04)
When dragging a document in Okular using the mouse, the cursor now wraps around horizontally when you reach the edge of the screen, just like it already does vertically (David Hurka, Okular 21.08)
On systems with slow PackageKit implementations (such as openSUSE-based distros), Discover now presents the initial view a bit more accurately while metadata is still being loaded (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22)
In the new Plasma System Monitor app, any page with a search field now focuses that search field by default when the page is loaded, so you can always start typing right away to search (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)
The Bluetooth applet’s section separator now visually matches that of the Networks applet (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22):

Web Presence
Pablo Marcos re-did Okular’s website to be nice and modern, with the help of Carl Schwan:

…And everything else
Keep in mind that 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 blog posts by other KDE contributors detailing the work they’re doing.
How You Can Help
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.