In just four days, Plasma 5.22 will be released, with all the features, bugfixes, and improved Wayland compatibility that we’ve been working on over the past few months! So it’s time to start working on 5.23 features. We also got a lot of work done for our apps too!

New Features

It’s now possible to globally disable IPv6 in the Plasma networks GUI settings (Jan Grulich, Plasma 5.23)

Gwenview now inherits the sorting order from Dolphin if Dolphin is used to open an image, so that you’ll never have that experience of opening an image in Gwenview and navigating to the next one, only to discover that it goes to an image other than the one you expect (Marco Martin, Dolphin and Gwenview 21.08)

You can now add a button to the toolbar in Okular to quickly toggle color-changing modes for the active document (David Hurka, Okular 21.08):

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Adding a new radio station in Elisa now works again (Jerome Guidon, Elisa 21.04.2)

Spectacle’s image annotator module is now correctly translated when using a non-English language (Alexander Volkov, Spectacle 21.08)

Konsole now lets you set your default shell the one with fewer than 3 letters, such as sh (Adriaan de Groot, Konsole 21.08)

In the Plasma X11 session, the keyboard layout change OSD once again appears when the keyboard layout is changed using an “alternative shortcut” trigger (Andrey Butirsky, Plasma 5.22)

Newly-downloaded Plasma System Monitor pages now become available instantly, rather than requiring the app to be restarted (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

Fixed various pixel misalignment issues in a few dialogs of the new Plasma System Monitor app (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

Applying a Global Theme that includes a new color scheme now results in that color scheme always being correctly applied (Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.22)

Clicking the “Use” button for newly-downloaded items in “Get new [thing]” dialogs once again works (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.83)

Global shortcuts using the actual ampersand chartacter (&) are now displayed correctly (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.83)

User Interface Improvements

Gwenview now lets you wrap around while browsing using the arrow keys, only shows the “you have reached the end” menu in slideshow mode by default, and lets you disable it entirely if you want (Marco Martin, Gwenview 21.08):

The list item sizes of “Small” and “Medium” for Dolphin’s Places panel are no longer almost visually identical (“Small” is now smaller), and the “Medium” size is now the default, to match the size of list items used in many other places now (Eugene Popov, Dolphin 21.08)

Elisa now uses the F11 hotkey to toggle entering and exiting Party Mode (Tranter Madi, Elisa 21.08)

When using Plasma in a live session (e.g. before installing it), when you connect to a Wi-Fi network, the password is now always stored locally rather than annoyingly asking the user gobbledygook questions about setting up a KWallet wallet to store it (Jan Grulich, Plasma 5.22)

GPU statistics are now only shown in System Monitor widgets and the app of the same name if they are supported by your GPU (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.22)

The System Tray’s Disks & Devices applet no longer lets you futilely try and fail to eject a removable disk that contains the root volume (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22)

The shadows of a maximized window no longer subtly spill over onto adjacent screens of a multi-screen arrangement (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22.1)

When a virtual keyboard is selected in the Plasma Wayland session, it no longer needs to be manually enabled using its system tray status notifier item before it will ever appear (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23)

When you click on a panel applet or System Tray item, the highlight effect now touches the panel edge and spans the full width/height of the applet’s click area, and there is a subtle and pleasing line separating the panel from the popup that just opened (Niccolò Venerandi, Plasma 5.23):

KRunner’s list items have been made slightly taller to accommodate larger icons (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

Plasma no longer sometimes crashes when displaying the events for a day that has exactly 5 events in it using one of the calendar widgets (Carl Schwan, Frameworks 5.83)

The graphs in System monitor widgets and the app of the same name no longer have weird lumps at the ends (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.83)

Clicking on category names in the “Open With…” dialog now expands the categories; no need to click on the tiny arrows (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.83)

The error message displayed when you try to add an autostart script for a file that does not exist or is not executable is now clearer (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.83)

One more thing

Version 1.2 of KDE’s Matrix chat app NeoChat has been released! It’s a major upgrade that brings NeoChat closer to prime time. I’ve been using it daily, and you should too!

…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.

This week a number of performance improvements landed for for areas as diverse as taking screenshots with Spectacle in the Plasma Wayland session, using the Plasma Wayland session in general with an Nvidia GPU, and entering or exiting Elisa’s “Party mode” and resizing the main window.

But that’s not all; we also added a bunch of nice new features and UI improvements:

New Features

Spectacle can now be invoked globally to take a screenshot of the window currently under the cursor using Meta+Ctrl+Print (Antonio Prcela, Spectacle 21.08)

Gwenview can now read embedded color profile information for image formats other than JPEG and PNG (Daniel Novomeský, Gwenview 21.08)

If your keyboard lacks a “mute microphone” key, you can now mute the default microphone using the Meta+speaker mute keyboard shortcut (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, the System Tray now notifies you when something is recording the screen, and gives you the opportunity to cancel it (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23)

KCommandBar has been added to all KXMLGui-using KDE apps, so you can start using it by hitting Ctrl+Alt+I in Dolphin, Gwenview, Okular, Konsole, Krita, Kdenlive, and so on! (Waqar Ahmed, Frameworks 5.83)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Spectacle is now much faster and more reliable in the Plasma Wayland Session (Vlad Zahorodnii, Spectacle 21.04.2)

Konsole no longer sometimes crashes when using the “random color scheme” setting (Luis Javier Merino Morán, Konsole 21.04.2)

Elisa’s fancy blur effects have been ported to use a lighter weight implementation, hugely improving the app’s visual performance when entering or exiting party mode or resizing the window (Tranter Madi, Elisa 21.08)

Dolphin no longer sometimes crashes when emptying the trash (Ömer Fadıl Usta) Dolphin 21.04.2)

In the Plasma Wayland session, disconnecting an external screen no longer causes all open Qt apps to crash (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22)

Majorly improved the reliability of the Plasma Wayland session for users of Nvidia hardware with the proprietary driver (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22)

Fixed a case where the new Plasma System Monitor app could crash on launch (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

The new Plasma System Monitor app no longer sometimes crashes when its main window is de-focused (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

The new Plasma System Monitor app now displays fully accurate disk usage information (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

Launching an app using the Kickoff Application Launcher no longer shows an unnecessary left-slide animation inside the popup before it closes (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.22)

Fixed tons of issues in the System Settings Virtual Desktops page, including a case of broken text display, the “Apply” button not becoming activated when it should, the “Defaults” button not bringing back removed virtual desktops, and several problems with the animation duration chooser (Nicolas Fella and David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22)

On System Settings’ Global Themes page, the “Use desktop layout from theme” button now correctly activates the Apply and Reset buttons (Cyril Rossi, Plasma 5.22)

Fixed a recent regression that could cause Dolphin to crash when searching for files (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.83

User Interface Improvements

Gwenview has now adopted KHamburgerMenu, giving it a cleaner look and a more approachable set of actions when the menubar is hidden (Noah Davis, Gwenview 21.08):

Discover’s “Installed” view is now case-insensitive for searching (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22)

The System Tray’s arrow uses to show the pop-up with hidden applets in it no longer appears when using the “Show all entries” setting (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.22)

The new Plasma System Monitor app now lets you search for multiple search terms separated with commas, just like the old KSysGuard app did (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

Users are now told what they will be losing when they disable file indexing (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

The Virtual Keyboard System Tray applet (which appears in the Plasma Wayland session) now disables itself completely if you have disabled the virtual keyboard globally (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.23)

On System Settings’ Virtual Desktops page, you can now double-click on a desktop’s name to rename it, and while you’re in renaming mode, the “Rename” button turns into a “Confirm new name” button (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

Auto-generated avatar images used in various places in Plasma and apps now use flat colors for the backgrounds, rather than gradients (Jan Blackquill, Frameworks 5.83)

…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.

This week I have another exciting new UI element to present: KCommandBar! You might have gotten the impression by my fawning over KHamburgerMenu that we care more about casual or novice users today… not so! KCommandBar is an expert-focused UI element implementing a HUD-style popup that aggregates all of the actions in a KDE app’s full menu structure, so that you can quickly activate features at the speed of thought! It’s like a KRunner inside your apps. You can also use it as a search, if you think a feature may exist somewhere but you don’t know where.

Hmm, does kate have a Block Selection mode? How do I activate it?

Oh, like that!k

Notice how it shows you the action’s keyboard shortcut too, so you can learn how to activate it even faster next time!

This UI element has been merged into the code but not yet rolled out for all KDE apps. Once this merge request is merged, all QWidgets-based KDE apps that use our KXMLGui framework (which is to say, most of them) will automatically get this feature for free! Big thanks to Waqar Ahmed for creating it!

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Dolphin’s split view closing animation no longer briefly shows the wrong view content in the left view before being closed (Felix Ernst, Dolphin 21.08)

Plasma no longer sometimes crashes when using the Audio Volume widget with full PipeWire support (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, connecting or disconnecting an external screen no longer sometimes immediately causes Plasma to crash (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, windows that automatically close themselves no longer get stuck on the screen as half-transparent phantoms if you happened to have been dragging them at the moment when they closed themselves (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22)

We pushed a better fix to prevent the network applet from erroneously showing a huge traffic spike the first time you open it that should hopefully fix it for good this time (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

System Monitor widgets now display the correct information when located on a panel (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

The new Plasma System Monitor app no longer sometimes visibly flickers when table views of apps or processes are updated (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, sub-menus of hamburger menus from interactive notifications (e.g. for newly-taken screenshots) no longer open in their own separate windows (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, showing the titlebar app menu no longer temporarily makes an item named “KDE Daemon” appear in your Task Manager (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, Aurorae window decorations are no longer visually corrupted when using high DPI scaling (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22)

When using the Breeze application style, the cursor no longer gets stuck in the “double headed arrow” shape when first moving over a resizable divider and then into a terminal panel, as in Dolphin (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.22)

The Icons-Only Task Manager’s “currently playing audio” indicator no longer overlaps with its numbered badge when the badge is visible (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.22)

The adaptive panel transparency feature and the Minimize All applet now work properly when using KWin’s “keep thumbnails for minimized windows” setting (Bharadwaj Raju and Abhijeet Viswa, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, external screens are now detected properly on multi-GPU systems (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.23)

Selecting folders in the folder selector dialog for Flatpak apps and others using XDG portals now works (Bharadwaj Raju, Frameworks 5.83)

When using a recent version of Qt, automatic spellchecking in Kate and KDevelop and other KTextEditor-based apps once again works out of the box without need to be turned off and back on again (Antonio Rojas, Frameworks 5.83)

User Interface Improvements

The tabs at the bottom of Gwenview’s sidebar now become icons-only at very small widths where the text would have previously been elided, and become icons+text at very wide widths (Noah Davis, Gwenview 21.08):

Dolphin’s Trash entry in the Places panel now has a context menu item to open the trash settings window (Saravanan K, Dolphin 21.08):

In Elisa, the inline Play button for playlist items now resumes playback when paused, rather than going back to the beginning of the song (Tranter Madi, Elisa 21.08)

System Tray applets with hamburger menus no longer redundantly show the same configure action inside them that is already visible available as a button on the header itself (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22):

In the new Plasma System Monitor app, you can now terminate the selected process/app by hitting the Delete key, just like you could in KSysGuard (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.22)

Clicking on any of the media controls on the lock screen no longer takes the keyboard focus away from the password field (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.22)

Using the Task manager’s “cycle through tasks with mouse wheel” no longer un-minimizes minimized tasks (Abhijeet Viswa, Plasma 5.22)

Widgets on the desktop now have a blurred background, making them more legible and better-looking compared to the previous transparent-without-blur background (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.23):

The Audio Volume applet’s Applications tab now distinguishes between applications that are currently playing or recording audio, and those that are not (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.23):

The System Settings Boot Splash page has been moved to the “Appearance” category (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22)

…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.

This week we finished up the last of our feature work for Plasma 5.22, so go test out the beta! We also started on 5.23 feature work, fixed a bunch of Wayland issues, and polished up our apps a bit more. Check it out:

New Features

The Digital Clock applet now has an option to display timezones not as their code or city name, but rather the offset from UTC time (Momo Cao, Plasma 5.22):

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Okular now correctly renders embedded PNG images in .cbz comic book files (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 21.04.2)

Gwenview now uses a standard Qt-provided graphics component for its image view, which fixes a common display corruption bug when panning and zooming, reduces memory use, and improves responsiveness, particularly with pinch-zoom gestures (Arjen Hiemstra, Gwenview 21.08)

In the Plasma Wayland session, the Plasma Browser Integration app no longer crashes in a loop when Firefox asks whether or not it can be your default browser, which it does too often due to a bug in Firefox itself when the GTK_USE_PORTAL=1 environment variable is set, as it is by default in Neon and Fedora (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer sometimes crashes when an external display goes to sleep or is disconnected (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22)

The new Plasma System Monitor app no longer crashes on close after switching pages many times (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

When using the Systemd startup feature, you can now unlock your session using the command-line loginctl utility (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, dragging-and-dropping Task Manager Tasks to the Pager applet to move them to different virtual desktops now works (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, the optional titlebar button that shows a window’s menu structure no longer strangely appears as a separate window, and navigating it with the keyboard also now works properly (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

The new Plasma System Monitor app no longer sometimes shows two “Name” columns in various table views (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

The new calendar no longer renders too many dots in Month and Year views (Carl Schwan, Frameworks 5.83)

Fixed the most common binding loop (which cause log spam as well as reduced performance) in QtQuick-based apps (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.83)

Plasma tab buttons with both icons and text once again center the content–this time without letting the text overflow! (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.83)

User Interface Improvements

Dolphin has now adopted KHamburgerMenu, which has allowed us to tweak the contents of the hamburger menu to be vastly more relevant, less redundant, less intimidating, and less likely to overflow on small screens. All the features are still there, just re-organized so that the common ones are easier to access and the uncommon ones are no longer so in-your-face (Felix Ernst, Dolphin 21.08):

Gwenview’s default toolbar layout has been tweaked for greater simplicity and user-friendliness (Felix Ernst, Gwenview 21.08):

Made various UX improvements to Okular’s quick annotation tools such as making them toggle-able, remembering the last-used one, and keeping the quick annotation tools distinct from the complex full toolbar view (Simone Giarin, Okular 21.08)

The System Tray Printers applet has been made simpler and more consistent by changing its Configure button to open the relevant System Settings page and moving its applet-specific options into the hamburger menu, just like the Disks & Devices applet does (me: Nate graham, print-manager 21.08):

You can now disable the “Open Terminal” item in Dolphin’s context menu (Alexander Lohnau, Dolphin 21.08)

When Dolphin is showing hidden files, they are now all placed after all the visible ones, rather than before them (Gastón Haro, Dolphin 21.08)

Using Kate’s feature to show the differences between the open version of a file and the version of it that was just updated on disk no longer populates lists of recent files with temporary “.diff” files (Méven Car, Kate 21.08)

The “Translucency” desktop effect is now disabled by default, so windows no longer become slightly translucent when moved or resized (me: Nate Graham and Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.23)

The System Tray Bluetooth applet’s “Add New Device” button now lives in the header, becoming consistent with other System Tray applets (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22):

It’s now possible to have the icons in your Icons-Only Task Manager automatically sorted by various criteria (alphabetically, by desktop, etc) exactly as you can do for the traditional Task Manager (Marko Gobin, Plasma 5.22)

…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.

Plasma 5.22 is just around the corner, and we put the finishing touches on some UI improvements to it, as well as our apps! Check it out:

New Features

You can now limit the update interval of System Monitor graphs (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.22)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Fixed an obscure way that Konsole could crash when opening its Settings window (Carlos Alves, Konsole 21.04.1)

Gwenview no longer gets confused and sad when asked to open a document whose mimetype does not match its filename extension (Arjen Hiemstra, Gwenview 21.08)

Fixed a way that Plasma could crash immediately upon login when using certain System Tray items, or when switching keyboard layouts (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.22)

Clicking the “Sleep” button when using Systemd startup mode with an older Systemd version no longer turns the computer off instead of putting it to sleep (Yaroslav Sidlovsky, Plasma 5.22)

Fixed an odd bug that could occasionally cause KRunner to not activate or deactivate when pressing its global shortcut (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.22)

When you tell the Clipboard applet to clear history and it asks you if you really want to proceed, clicking “No” after checking the “don’t ask again” checkbox no longer breaks the “clear History” functionality forever; it will now ask you again the next time! (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.22)

Used swap space is now visible in the new Plasma System Monitor app’s Memory graph (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

Opening a .flatpakref file in Discover for an already-installed app no longer presents an odd error (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22)

Discover no longer shows an “Uninstall” button on update pages where it doesn’t make sense (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22)

The button to configure your screen reader in System Settings’ Accessibility page now actually uh works (how embarrassing) (Carl Schwan, Plasma 5.22)

The kdeinit5 process no longer crashes either randomly or constantly when trying to generate thumbnails during semi-common operations like taking screenshots, copying files, etc (Fabian Vogt, Frameworks 5.82)

User Interface Improvements

Ark now shows a “welcome screen” of sorts if you open it without an archive, and also opens to a saner window size (Jiří Wolker and me: Nate Graham, Ark 21.08):

Spectacle’s options for what to copy after taking a screenshot (if anything) have been substantially clarified in the settings window, and the setting to copy the file path to the clipboard now works even if autosave is turned off (it saves the file to a temp path) (Srevin Saju, Spectacle 21.08):

Gwenview’s sidebar has received a visual refresh to be more in line with current KDE user interface guidelines (Noah Davis, Gwenview 21.08):

Dolphin’s tags menu in the search view now has a “Clear selection” button so those of you who make extensive use of tags can more easily start a new tag-based search (Ismael Asensio, Dolphin 21.08)

The Notifications applet’s “Clear all notifications” action has been moved out of the hamburger menu to make it more accessible, and the applet’s “Configure” button now opens the System Settings Notifications page rather than a mostly empty applet configuration window (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22):

The System Tray Notifications pop-up now closes when the last notification is cleared by using the manual close buttons in the view instead of the “Clear all Notifications” button (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.22)

Discover’s Sources menu is now accessible and usable with the keyboard (Carl Schwan, Plasma 5.22)

System Settings’ Audio Volume page no longer shows unused and inapplicable settings when the system is using the new PipeWire-PulseAudio compatibility system (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.22)

The Task Manager’s “Highlight windows” feature now only triggers when you hover the cursor over a window thumbnail, which makes it useful and not annoying, so we turned it on by default (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.22)

The System Tray Vaults applet’s “Create new Vault” button now lives in the header, to match the design of other System Tray applets (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22):

The System Tray Battery & Brightness System applet’s header has received an overhaul: the “Configure” button now opens the relevant System Settings page rather than a mostly-empty applet config window, and that window’s only option has been made into a checkable item in the Hamburger menu (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22):

System Settings’ own settings window is no longer too small (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22)

The corner radius of KWin-drawn titlebars now respects the scale factor on X11 (Paul McAuley, Plasma 5.22)

There’s no longer a little empty space on the right edge of a non-maximized panel (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.22)

Dolphin’s breadcrumbs bar now displays more user-friendly text for search results (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.83)

The System Settings Browser Identification page has been removed because it was almost completely pointless in this day and age (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.83)

…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.

This was another really really big week in KDE!

First we got support for hot-plugging GPUs and FreeSync/Adaptive Sync/variable screen refresh rates on Wayland in Plasma 5.22, thanks to Xaver Hugl!

Next, thanks to Aleix Pol, Gonzalez, we got a new Wayland protocol for tracking app activation and hand-off which will eventually allow KDE apps to display visual feedback when launching, and bring forward existing windows of already-open apps when asked to display new content!

And then there’s the rest of this cool stuff! See if you can count how many of your longstanding annoyances have been addressed below:

Other New Features

Konsole now lets you save your current layout to a file, and load saved layouts at will (Lucas Biaggi, Konsole 21.08)

Spectacle now lets you copy the image’s path to the clipboard right there from the main UI, and performs whatever action is necessary to make that possible (e.g. saving the image if you ask for the path) (Srevin Saju, Spectacle 21.08):

KHelpCenter now has a “Full Screen” mode (Yuri Chornoivan, KHelpCenter 5.7.6.21080)

In the Plasma Wayland session, you can now choose which virtual keyboard to use, or disable it entirely if that’s your thing (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22)

The Digital Clock’s pop-up now displays an “Add…” button that opens Kontact so you can add events, and also shows days with any events using pretty dots rather than ugly triangles (Carl Schwan, Plasma 5.22 and Frameworks 5.82):

It’s now possible to configure normal-priority notifications to appear in your full-screen windows, so for example you can (optionally, of course) still see them while watching fullscreen video or reading documents in Okular’s fullscreen view (Oleksandr Popel, Plasma 5.22)

The new Plasma System Monitor app now remembers the last page you were viewing by default, but if you want, you can instead set it to open a specific page every time (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Improved the visibility of selected text in Konsole (Jan Blackquill, Konsole 21.04.1)

Konsole no longer crashes when you enter an absurdly long string into it (like 6000 characters long) and then immediately maximize the window (Carlos Alves, Konsole 21.04.1)

After using the Trim to Selection tool in Okular, the Browse tool is once again automatically activated (Gerd Wachsmuth, Okular 21.04.1)

Video thumbnails now work again when using distro packages with ffmpeg 3 but not 4 (Xuetian Weng, KDE Gear 21.04.1)

Plasma’s Folder View widget (which handles desktop icons) now calculates icon positions correctly from the top-left corner of the top-left-most screen, which fixes various bugs such as icons on the last column moving over to the left-most column after a reboot or after creating new icons, or icons on non-left-most screens being mis-positioned out of the view and making the whole desktop scrollable (Oleg Solovyov, Plasma 5.21.5)

Renaming items on the desktop using the keyboard shortcut (F2 by default) now works in the case when the icon was selected using its little plus sign button that appear when you hover the mouse over it while using the default single-click mode (Tobias Fella, Plasma 5.21.5)

The Plasma Wayland session no longer hangs at login when booting in basic/fallback graphics mode (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer crashes when you apply firmware updates (using Discover or just with the fwupdmgr command-line tool) with a touchscreen laptop or a graphics tablet connected (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22)

Konsole no longer hangs when using the top/bottom split feature and the Oxygen application style (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22)

Plasma can no longer freeze by viewing year 0 in the calendar (Alois Wohlschlager, Plasma 5.22)

Login scripts now run as expected when using systemd startup mode (Henri Chain, Plasma 5.22)

Opening an audio or video file from Dolphin no longer causes the “now playing audio” indicator to appear on Dolphin as well as the app that’s actually playing it (Méven Car, Plasma 5.22)

Changing your system icon theme or using an AppImage no longer sometimes causes all System Tray icons to temporarily become invisible (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.22)

Removed recently-accidentally-added default global shortcuts for the “Reboot/Halt/Log Out Without Confirmation” actions, because actions like these are too dangerous to have default global shortcuts (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22)

KWin now has better support for the Panfrost Mali driver (Tomasz Gajc, Plasma 5.22)

System monitor widgets and the new app by the same name no longer indicate that you have no CPUs under certain circumstances (lol) (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.22)

It’s no longer possible to try to remove the entry for your home folder in the System Settings File Indexing page, because this isn’t a valid action and doing so doesn’t work (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22)

In the Plasma Wayland session, sub-menus of context menus for Plasma applets no longer bizarrely appear as separate windows with their own titlebars and everything (lol) (David Redondo, Frameworks 5.82)

The “Get new Plugins” window no longer displays spurious error messages when you cancel the installation of a plugin (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.82)

Fixed one of the ways that Kirigami-based apps could crash when displaying icons (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Frameworks 5.82)

User Interface Improvements

Elisa’s Now Playing page has undergone a UI overhaul which sees the introduction of a two-column layout in widescreen mode, collapsing to a multi-view one-column layout in narrow mode. You can also turn off the blurred album art background on that page if you don’t like it (Tranter Madi, Elisa 21.08):

Elisa’s Shuffle and Repeat buttons are now a bit more comprehensible by showing their checked states when active and making the tooltip clear that it is describing the current state, not the action that will be performed when you click on the button (Tranter Madi, Elisa 21.08)

Dolphin’s Information Panel now updates in real-time as the file for which it is displaying information gets updated by any other apps and when the size changes for a folder for which it is displaying information (Méven Car, Dolphin 21.08)

The Buttons in Gwenview’s status bar now have correct sizing and outside margins (Noah Davis, Gwenview 21.08):

The “Go up” button in Filelight is now disabled when you’re viewing the root level of your filesystem (Burak Hancerli, Filelight 21.08)

The Kickoff application launcher menu now implements a Triangle Menu Filter, which means that you can move the cursor diagonally over the categories list to reach the items in the view without accidentally switching categories! So we have also removed the irritating hover delay when moving the cursor vertically to switch categories! (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22)

KRunner now shows multi-line text for long dictionary definitions! (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.22):

KRunner no longer returns duplicate or pseudo-duplicate search results, such as “Launch Firefox” and also “launch firefox” (the terminal command) (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.22)

What counts as a default setting in System settings now takes into account the settings of the active Global theme; for example when using the Breeze Dark Global Theme, the Breeze Dark color scheme is considered the default color scheme (Henri Chain, Plasma 5.22)

The Battery & Brightness applet’s user interface for communicating the ability to temporarily inhibit sleep and screen locking has hopefully been made much more comprehensible, and also takes up less space (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22):

When using a multi-screen setup, apps and windows are now opened by default on the screen containing the cursor (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.22)

You can now double-click on the grid items in System Settings to quickly apply the settings for the double-clicked-upon item without having to reach down and hit the Apply button (Wael Chlouftou and me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22)

Discover’s application page now has an improved layout including more standard-style cards for reviews (Carl Schwan, Plasma 5.22):

GTK apps using the libhandy library–particularly for its tab bars–now look more native when run on Plasma (Jacob Kauffmann, Plasma 5.22):

The now-visible-by-default Panel in the Present Windows effect is now darkened along with the background to communicate that it’s non-interactive (Felipe Kinoshita, Plasma 5.22)

The Audio Volume applet’s tooltip now shows the user-friendly name of the current audio output rather than its technical name (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.22)

GTK apps now use Breeze-style arrows in menus and various other places (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22):

Middle-clicking System Monitor applets now opens the new Plasma System Monitor app (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22)

Discover’s “Updates” jump list action has been clarified so that it no longer seems identical to other similar actions in search results (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22):

Various keyboard shortcuts can now be used to manipulate the volume of the currently focused stream in the Audio Volume applet: the numbers 0-9 to change the volume, M to mute, Enter/Return to make it the default one, and Menu Key to open the menu (Chris Holland, Plasma 5.22)

The Clipboard applet no longer features a “Quit” action, because you can’t actually quit it (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.22)

Scrolling over the Battery & Brightness applet to change the brightness now works more consistently and predictably with both a high-resolution touchpad as well as a traditional mouse wheel (Bernhard Sulzer, Plasma 5.22)

Shadows behind the clock text in the lock and login screens has been slightly lightened when displayed above light backgrounds so that it doesn’t appear so sharp and harsh (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22)

A variety of QWidgets-based KDE apps will no longer have absurdly small 640×480 pixel default window sizes (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.82)

Web shortcuts now display their icons by default (Ismael Asensio, Frameworks 5.82)

…And everything else

Keep in mind that this blog only covers the tip of the iceberg (though this week it was perhaps a bigger tip than usual)! 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.