Plasma 5.18 has been released! A ton of work went into this release and we’re very proud of it. However I’d like to apologize for it being a bit buggier than we’d have preferred. We’ve gone balls-to-the-wall off the chain bananas fixing the issues you folks are reporting! Almost all of the highest-profile issues are fixed already, to be released with Plasma 5.18.1 in a few days! And we’ve got the less major regressions in our sights too! But still, we know that stability hasn’t always been our strong suit and we’re aiming for a higher standard next time, discussing how we can get there. So thank you for your patience and understanding, and enjoy Plasma 5.18!

Oh and we also fixed some of the most long-standing issues with Samba shares. 🙂 Check it all out:

New Features

• Konsole now lets you set a custom color for the text under the block-style insertion point (Arthur Kasimov, Konsole 20.04.0):
  
• In Elisa, it’s now possible to disable the feature of showing the current song’s playback position on the app’s Task Manager entry (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 20.04.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Moving or copying files onto Samba shares no longer resets their timestamps to the current time (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• In Dolphin, it’s now possible to create and paste files on Samba shares (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• When trying to connect to a Samba share, you now have the opportunity to specify the domain, allowing connections to shares with a non-default domain (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• URLs beginning with cifs:// are now accepted as valid paths to Samba shares (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• Files on Samba no longer nonsensically show up as belonging to random local users (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• Samba shares now show their available amount of free space in Dolphin (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• Dolphin now correctly hides files on Samba shares that have been marked as hidden (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• Okular no longer crashes when showing a print preview (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 20.04.0
• Okular no longer permits PDF documents with embedded JavaScript code to exhaust all system resources (Harri Porten, Okular 20.04.0)
• Konsole’s dark background detection feature now works again (Manuel Rüger, Konsole 20.04.0)
• Those of you who had your widgets locked in Plasma 5.17 or earlier can now access the new global edit mode. In the meantime, before Plasma 5.18.1 is released, as a workaround you can run qdbus org.kde.plasmashell /PlasmaShell evaluateScript "lockCorona(false)" to fix the issue immediately (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Then “Apply” button on the System Settings Fonts page now activates normally again so you can actually save changes you’ve made to the default font configuration (Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Mouse input in GTK apps using XWayland now works properly (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Closing windows using the Present Windows effect no longer messes up the window stacking order and prevents windows from being focused or de-focused (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Snap apps no longer get stuck in a half-installed state if you cancel the installation after being told that installing the app will require disabling security confinement (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Plasma no longer crashes when you switch virtual desktops after changing the layout on Wayland (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Menubar text in Electron-based apps is now readable (Carson Black, Plasma 5.18.1)
• The desktop’s chord keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Alt + d, then a) once again work (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.1)
• System Settings pages once again prompt you to save or discard your changes if you try to navigate to another page with unsaved changes (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.1)
• The Plasma Wayland session is no longer sometimes called “Plasma (Wayland) (Wayland)” on the System Settings Login Screen (SDDM) page (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.1)
• The System Settings Search page no longer allows content in the scrollable list view to overlap with the scrollbar (Plasma 5.18.1):
  
• The content layout of the “Advanced” tab in the System Settings Login Screen page no longer hilariously stretches vertically with large window sizes (Filip Fila, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Recent files that are located on Samba shares can now be accessed properly using the application launcher menus (Méven Car, Plasma 5.19.0)
• The Baloo file indexer can now be enabled and disabled and paused and resumed again (David Edmundson, Frameworks 5.68)
• The Baloo file indexer now correctly resumes indexing, both automatically and manually, after the machine has woken from sleep (Stefan Brüns, Frameworks 5.68)
• Fixed various Plasma apps and System Settings pages crashing when needed plugins aren’t available for some reason (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.68)
• Fixed a recent regression in how controls in FormLayouts throughout Plasma and Kirigami apps were positioned (Marco Martin, Frameworks 5.68)
• Non-maximized panels using non-default color schemes or Plasma themes no longer have odd white corners (Niccolò Venerandi, Frameworks 5.68)

User Interface Improvements

• Dolphin’s context menu now has “Create New” back at the top again (me: Nate Graham, Dolphin 20.04.0):
  
• Elisa’s Now Playing view now uses a blurred and lightened version of the album art as the background rather than showing a slice of it at the top (me: Nate Graham. Elisa 20.04.0):
  

• Elisa’s grid items are now opened by simply clicking/tapping once on them (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 20.04.0):
  
• When a notification pop-up tracking the progress of an extended job is expanded to show more details, it no longer ever repeatedly resizes itself to be smaller and then larger again as the height of the text inside changes (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.1)
• After feedback that Task Manager tooltips with album art in them looked a bit crowded, we redesigned them to look better and have better usability (me: Nate Graham, Manuel Jésus de la Fuente, and Tranter Madi, Plasma 5.19.0):
  
• The “audio playing” indicator on Task Manager items are now a bit smaller and closer to the edge when using an Icons-Only Task Manager so that you aren’t so likely to click on them by mistake (George Vogiatzis, Plasma 5.19.0). Also as a reminder, if you hate them, you can turn them off! Just right-click on an empty area of the Task manager, click “Configure Task Manager…”, and uncheck “Mark applications that play audio”.
• Large titles throughout KDE software are no longer quite so huge (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.68):
  

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• icons that incorporate the 🚫 symbol now have the slash going through it in the exact same orientation (Matej Mrenica, Frameworks 5.68)

How You Can Help

Upgrade to Plasma 5.18 and find all the bugs we missed! 🙂 The first point release (i.e. Plasma 5.18.1) will be released in two days, so every bug report we get soon is super important.

More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out more ways to help 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.

You only need to wait two more days for Plasma 5.18! We’re working overtime to get it in great shape for the release and already looking forward towards 5.19, which promises to be another very exciting release. 🙂 Have a look-see:

New Features

• The Samba status page in Info Center has been completely rewritten and now actually works (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The System Settings Default Applications page has been completely rewritten to have a radically better and more comprehensible user interface (Méven Car, Plasma 5.19.0):

  

• Info Center now shows information about your graphics hardware (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.19.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Elisa no longer lets you set up a radio station source with an invalid URL (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 20.04.0)
• The System Settings Fonts page now enables its “Apply” button at the correct times, so it’s usable again (Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.18.0)
• GTK apps now automatically use the Breeze-GTK theme by default unless the distro overrides it (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.18.0)
• App windows now resize much faster and more smoothly (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The System Settings Removable Devices page no longer shows Snap app mount points (Méven Car, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The System Tray popup no longer sometimes shows blank items (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.18.0)
• When dragging a file to the bottom-right corner of the desktop, the context menu that appears is now positioned correctly (Tranter Madi, Plasma 5.19.0)
• The correct drag cursor is now used when performing drag-and-drop operations on Wayland (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Fixed a severe memory leak in apps (like Dolphin) that use the KUrlNavigator component, which could potentially result in gigabytes of wasted memory (Fabian Vogt, Frameworks 5.68)
• Canceling a file transfer operation now results in the operation actually stopping immediately, with no residual clean-up processes being left behind that can cause errors later (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.68)

User Interface Improvements

• Improved the margins and fonts of Elisa’s grid and list view items (Alexander Stippich, Elisa 20.04.0)
• The first time System Settings is opened, its main window no longer jarringly resizes itself to be larger after half a second; instead it just opens at the correct size (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Discover no longer percent-encodes any HTML-unsafe characters in search terms; instead it just removes any HTML tags that were accidentally included in the search (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.1):
  
• The fancy new “Get New [stuff]” window that you’ll see throughout Plasma 5.18 no longer has an ugly white bar at the bottom, now has a more sensible default size, and its close button always has text (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.67):
  
• Improved some commonly confusing terms in various KDE apps: “Redisplay” is now “Refresh” and “AutoSkip” is now “Skip All” (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.68)

How You Can Help

Upgrade to Plasma 5.18 and find all the bugs we missed! 🙂 The first point release (i.e. Plasma 5.18.1) will be released a week after launch day, so every bug report we get during that week is super important.

More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out more ways to help 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.

The release of Plasma 5.18 is upon us! In 10 more days, it will be yours to have and to hold. Until then, the Plasma developers have been working feverishly to fix bugs–and land some welcome improvements in 5.19! Check it out:

New Features

• As part of the ongoing “Make the System Tray applet pop-ups look better” initiative, we now have the first version of the new Audio Volume pop-up. In addition to looking better, it includes a new and more obvious global “Raise maximum volume” setting, a global mute mode, and a less visually intrusive way to set the default audio device (George Vogiatzis, Plasma 5.19.0):
  

  
• The KInfoCenter app now looks radically better. Under the hood, it’s actually now using System Settings to display everything; the old app is no more! This fixes various visual bugs afflicting the old app such as inconsistent tooltip appearance and weird uninteractive tree view headers that did nothing when clicked on (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.19.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• In Elisa, queuing all tracks from all genres now works (Alexander Stippich, Elisa 19.12.2)
• Elisa’s global playlist no longer experiences visual glitches when loading .m3u playlist files or deleting the first song of an album (Alexander Stippich, Elisa 19.12.2)
• Dolphin’s “Natural Sorting” mode now works with all sort orders (George Vogiatzis, Dolphin 20.04.0)
• Dolphin’s “you’re about to drop an item here” indicator no longer disappears when dragging an item right above a selected item in the Places panel (George Vogiatzis, Dolphin 19.12.2)
• When Spectacle is configured to take a new screenshot if the PrintScreen key is pressed while Spectacle is already running, it will now take that screenshot using the currently-selected options rather than the default options (David Redondo, Spectacle 20.04.0)
• Apps with spaces in their names now behave properly when pinned to the Task Manager (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
• GTK apps can now use fonts with spaces in their names (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Context menus opened from notifications now look correct and appear in the right place on Wayland (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Fixed the weather station chooser page again after breaking it last time while fixing something else (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The Folder View pop-up now uses the correct text color for items’ labels (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• Entries in the new System Tray configurations page now always have the right icons (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.18.0)

User Interface Improvements

• KInfoCenter now shows IPv6 network information (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The Task Manager tooltip highlight effect now looks better for tooltips that include built-in playback controls for media (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• Buttons in Notifications are now laid out in a more compact way (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
  
• VLC’s Breeze theme icon now looks more like the original icon (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.67):
  

How You Can Help

Please test the Plasma 5.18 beta release! You can find out how here. If you find bugs, file them–especially if they are regressions from Plasma 5.17. We want to get as much testing, bug filing, and bugfixing as possible during the one-month beta period so that the official release is as smooth as possible.

More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out more ways to help 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 has gained its first user of the new notification inline reply feature in 5.18: Telegram Desktop!

Big thanks to Kai Uwe Broulik for venturing forth to contribute a patch to Telegram that made this possible.

Next up, we have a winner for the Plasma 5.18 wallpaper competition: the elegant and soothing Volna, by Nikita Babin!

Let’s all give a round of applause to Nikita for his incredible contribution which will be seen for years to come!

And one more thing: thanks to Niccolò Venerandi, the kde.org website now has a page showing where you can buy devices with Plasma and KDE apps pre-installed!

This is a great way for people and institutions to buy a complete product featuring the end-to-end KDE software experience without having to manually install an OS or worry about hardware compatibility.

As if that weren’t enough, here’s the usual assortment of new features, bugfixes, and UI improvements:

New Features

• The names of your wallpapers’ creators are now visible, when that information is available (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.19.0):
  
• In KDE apps that allow you to override the systemwide color scheme, there’s now an option to revert back to using the systemwide color scheme (David Redondo, Frameworks 5.67):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Elisa’s feature to enqueue all visible tracks now works for all views and with all modern Qt versions (5.12-5.14) (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 19.12.2)
• There’s no longer sometimes a stray thumbnail.so process left running after Dolphin is finished generating thumbnail preview images (Ambroz Bizjak, Dolphin 20.04.0)
• Searching for tags with spaces in them in Dolphin now works properly (Ismael Asensio, Dolphin 20.04.0)
• Removing the screen locking keyboard shortcut no longer crashes System Settings when navigating to the Workspace Behavior category (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.0)
• KMenuEdit no longer crashes when you create new entries (David Redondo, Plasma 5.18.0)
• KInfoCenter no longer crashes when visiting the PCI Devices page when there are no PCI devices, no longer shows duplicates in the USB Devices category, shows Xorg version information correctly, and now only shows the “Copy to clipboard in English” button when you are actually using a language other than English (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.18.0)
• GTK3 windows with client-side decorations are now resizable on Wayland (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Apps are no longer incorrectly and inconsistently scaled when using Qt 5.14 or newer and a high DPI scale factor (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Discover now always shows large images when clicking on screenshots, and is also much faster to navigate between them (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.18.0)
• KRunner is now more reliable at finding open windows (Méven Car, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Separator lines in the Kickoff Application Launcher now respect the current Plasma theme (Filip Fila, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The highlight effect for the clickable “audio playing” indicator for Task Manager items is now drawn behind the icon so it looks good with all Plasma themes (Filip Fila, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The System Settings Users page now lets you remove a user’s email address, warns you before you switch to another user with unsaved data, and no longer has a pointless and unused “Defaults” button (Méven Car, Plasma 5.18 and 5.19)

User Interface Improvements

• Elisa now lets you set custom images for your favorite internet radio stations (Jérôme Guidon, 20.04.0)
• Discover no longer misleadingly shows your OS as the source for locally-downloaded package files (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Turning off animations globally now also turns them off for GTK and GNOME apps too (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Clicking on the button in the network widget that shows the search field now automatically gives focus to the search field too (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Shadows for Plasma pop-ups and dialogs are now a bit softer and more subtle (Niccoló Venerandi, Frameworks 5.67):
  

How You Can Help

Please test the Plasma 5.18 beta release! You can find out how here. If you find bugs, file them–especially if they are regressions from Plasma 5.17. We want to get as much testing, bug filing, and bugfixing as possible during the one-month beta period so that the official release is as smooth as possible.

More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out more ways to help 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.

A ton of features, bugfixes, and and user interfaces have landed for Plasma 5.18, and a beta release is now available for adventurous types to test out ahead of the release next month.

I think this is the Plasma release that a lot of people have been waiting for. It’s faster, more stable, more beautiful, and more feature-filled than any previous release, and it comes with a Long Term Support guarantee. Nothing is perfect, and we can always do better (and always strive to), but I think Plasma 5.18 is going to hit a sweet spot for a lot of people. Look for it in the next LTS releases of Kubuntu and openSUSE Leap, as well as all the rolling release distros of course.

New Features

• Screen auto-rotation now works on Wayland for computers with accelerometers (Roman Gilg, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The visual settings for GTK apps are no longer required to be configured manually and separately; instead, they are automatically synced from your settings for KDE apps – except for the theme itself, which can still be set separately because there isn’t a 1:1 mapping between KDE and GTK themes (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The popular Thumbnail Grid Task Switcher is now shipped as a part of the kdeplasma-addons package (Chris Holland, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The System Settings Background Services page has been rewritten to for better looks and usability (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.19.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• JPEG thumbnails are now subtly sharper and better-looking (William Tradewell, Dolphin 20.04.0)
• System Settings no longer crashes when you click on the “Global Themes” item on the main page (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.0)
• KInfoCenter no longer crashes when you navigate between the Energy Info page and other pages (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The calculator applet no longer displays bizarre results for certain multiplication operations (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Checkboxes drawn on top of images and selectable list items are now always visible (Noah Davis, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The feature that allows you to optionally set an image as the wallpaper when dragging it to the desktop now works with remote images in web browsers too (Tranter Madi, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Discover should now be more reliable at locating apps no matter what their AppStream ID is; for example Blender will be accessible from both blender.desktop and also org.blender.Blender (Aleix Pol Gonzales, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Fixed a few visual glitches in the animations for the Widget Explorer (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.0)
• It’s once again possible to set your default email client to be a terminal program and have everything work properly when you click on mailto: links (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.67)

User Interface Improvements

• The System Tray’s settings window has received a major visual overhaul that makes it much more comprehensible and useful (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• When you click on a notification, it now brings that app forward if the app doesn’t define a custom click behavior (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Throughout Plasma and System Settings, the “Get new [thing]” dialog has a fancy new look and is much more usable (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• There are now keyboard shortcuts set by default for switching from one virtual desktop to another: Ctrl+Meta+Arrow keys (Björn Feber, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Scrollbars in the Breeze style for desktop apps are now wider and separated from the content view by a subtle separator line. You can see it in the other screenshots throughout this blog post! Basically after trying the fake overlay scrollbar style for a few years, we decided that it just didn’t work so we went back to the older style. Note that on mobile we now use real overlay style scrollbars with no content layout hacks, but instead of becoming invisible, the scrollbar becomes tiny and hugs the edge so you can still see your place in the scrollable view. (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.18.0)
• It’s now much simpler and more obvious how to create a WiFi hotspot (Jan Grulich, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Discover’s reviews sheet now has the proper width and is wide enough to display the reviews comfortably (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• A notification is now shown when Bluetooth device pairing is successful (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• Bluetooth devices that communicate their battery level now show that level in the Bluetooth applet’s popup as well as in the Battery and Brightness applet popup (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The Plasma wallpaper slideshow feature now includes the default wallpaper path automatically so you don’t need to go hunting around and add it yourself (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0)

How You Can Help

Please test the Plasma 5.18 beta release! You can find out how here. If you find bugs, file them–especially if they are regressions from Plasma 5.17. We want to get as much testing, bug filing, and bugfixing as possible during the one-month beta period so that the official release is as smooth as possible.

More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out more ways to help 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 should have a little something for everyone. We’ve got bug squashing galore in preparation for Plasma 5.18, substantial speed improvements for wifi connection and Discover launch time, some welcome new features, and the return of an old one–renaming files from the context menu in file dialogs.

New Features

• Okular tabs can now be closed by middle-clicking on them, and closed tabs can now be re-opened by using the new File > Undo Closed Tab menu item or the standard ctrl+Shift+T keyboard shortcut (Bob Bai, Okular 1.10.0)
• There’s a new System Tray applet for controlling the Night color feature that automatically appears when it’s on and allows you to turn it on and off (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• It is once again possible to rename files from the context menu in the open/save dialogs (Méven Car and me: Nate Graham), Frameworks 5.67):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Elisa’s header area no longer flickers horribly when the window is resized (Alexander Stippich, Elisa 19.12.1):
  
• Konsole no longer freezes when copying in TMux Copy mode or after setting a really really long tab title (Mariusz Glebocki, Konsole 19.12.2)
• Gwenview no longer crashes while generating thumbnails for images with malformed preview images (Christoph Feck and me: nate Graham, Gwenview 19.12.2)
• Gwenview no longer lets you futilely initiate drag-and-drop operations with right clicks, middle clicks, etc (Tasos Sahanidis, Gwenview 20.04.0)
• Plasma no longer crashes when you drag a file to the virtual desktop switcher (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.17.5)
• Searching for an app in the System Settings Notifications page and then clearing the search no longer duplicates the items in the list (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.17.5)
• Fixed various bugs pertaining to displays on Wayland such that KWin no longer crashes when an external screen is unplugged or turned off, turned on, or re-connected (Roman Gilg, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Fixed two of the most common KWin crashes (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Plasma is now faster to connect to a wifi network on startup by up to 3 seconds (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.0)
• System Settings no longer crashes when you try to install an invalid GTK theme (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.18.0)
• It’s now possible to click on entries in the context menu for System Tray items on Wayland (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.0
• Discover now launches much faster and no longer shows a graphical glitch in place of its main user interface while it’s launching (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Icons-Only Task Manager apps now always show the “audio playing” indicator when audio is playing no matter the thickness of the Panel or the size of the icons (George Vogiatzis, Plasma 5.18.0)
• It’s no longer possible to use window tiling shortcuts on the System Tray popup (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.18.0)
• When using a vertical panel, the clock’s “Long Date” format now shows all text instead of eliding most of it (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• Fixed a visual glitch causing the window titlebar to appear separated from the window content when using the Zoom In or Wobbly Windows effect (Vlad Zahorodnii and David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The Audio Volume applet now has the correct size and no longer shows a big empty right margin when used on the desktop outside of the System Tray (George Vogiatzis, Plasma 5.18.0)
• KRunner’s calculator now properly rounds long numbers (Lukas Pichler, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Dragging in the text field while renaming items on the desktop no longer allows you to select other items in the process (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Menubars in Electron-based apps are now more legible (Carson Black, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Hovering the cursor over items in the GTK file dialog now highlights those items using the correct color (Carson Black, Plasma 5.18.0)
• When using Chromium/Chrome with client-side decorations, the maximize button now changes appropriately when the window is maximized (Carson Black, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Fixed a performance and battery life issue that could cause a rogue http.so process to stick around and consume power and CPU time (Kevin Funk, Frameworks 5.67)
• Inline messages generated by the KMessageWidget widget are no longer briefly blurry on first appearance when using a fractional scale factor (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.67)

User Interface Improvements

• When searching for tags in Dolphin, the tag menu stays now open after you select each tag so you don’t need to re-open it if you want to search for files with multiple tags (Ismael Asensio, Dolphin 20.04.0):
  
• Songs in Elisa’s playlist now make better use of available horizontal space (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 20.04.0):
  
• The Battery and Brightness system tray applet no longer flashes irritatingly and consumes extra CPU resources when the battery’s charge level is critically low; between the persistent notification and the red icon, you’re not going to miss this (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The Plasma Vaults item in the System Tray now automatically hides itself when there aren’t any vaults configured (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Improved the wallpaper chooser UI in various ways: the time chooser spinboxes now show their labels inline, lists now have placeholder messages when empty, and wallpaper folder list items now show the full path in a subtitle (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
  
• Pushbuttons used in Plasma configuration panels now have the same clear and obvious keyboard focus style as pushbuttons used everywhere else (Marco Martin, Frameworks 5.67)
• Microsoft Windows link files now use the symlink file icon (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.67)

How You Can Help

If you’ve got artistic talent, rev up your digital paintbrushes and try your hand at getting your work seen by millions of Plasma LTS users for years to come in our wallpaper competition: https://community.kde.org/KDE_Visual_Design_Group/Plasma_5.18_Wallpaper_Competition!

More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out more ways to help 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.

Most KDE contributors are still recovering from their holiday vacations, but nevertheless the first of my 2020 predictions has been fulfilled: KIO now makes remote locations available to non-KDE apps using FUSE mounts! This brings us to full feature parity with GNOME’s GVFS system and makes it painless to interact with files in remote locations using apps like LibreOffice, Blender, and VLC. Full support will be shipped to users with the Dolphin 20.04 release.

More New Features

• There are now thumbnail previews for cursor files (Kai Uwe Broulik, Dolphin 20.04.0):
  
• Plasma’s amazing notification system gained support for apps to let you reply to messages inline (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• The context menu in the System Settings Network Connections page no longer sometimes appears in the wrong place when clicked (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.17.5)
• The Alt-tilde shortcut to switch between the current app’s open windows now works on Wayland when Num Lock mode is active (Roman Gilg, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The System Settings Icons page now correctly highlights the current icon theme when it was installed and activated using Discover, and deleting an icon theme no longer resets the view’s currently-selected icon theme (Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.18.0)
• System Settings no longer shows the dreaded “ambiguous shortcut” dialog when you hit Ctrl+F; the shortcut now works to focus the search field (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0)
• KDE’s GTK theming now respects the GTK2_RC_FILES environment variable (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.18.0)
• File dialogs opened by applications that only supports local files (e.g. Firefox when using the openSUSE patches to show the KDE file dialog) now shows disks and removable media devices in their Places panels (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.66)
• Dolphin no longer crashes when you rename the trash can (Elvis Angelaccio, Frameworks 5.66)

User Interface Improvements

• Elisa’s playlist now shows the full album and artist names in the header area instead of eliding after one line (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 20.04.0):
  
• In Elisa, you can now play different songs in the playlist using the keyboard (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 20.04.0)
• When using plasma-browser-integration, files downloaded using your web browser show up as recent documents in Dolphin, the file dialogs, and the application launcher menu (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Discover now presents app and addon reviews more elegantly (KDE VDG and me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• Audacity project files and Apple Wallet files now have nice Breeze icons (Kai Uwe Broulik and Carson Black, Frameworks 5.66)

How You Can Help

If you’ve got artistic talent, rev up your digital paintbrushes and try your hand at getting your work seen by millions of Plasma LTS users for years to come in our wallpaper competition: https://community.kde.org/KDE_Visual_Design_Group/Plasma_5.18_Wallpaper_Competition!

More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out more ways to help 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.