The Plasma 5.23 beta has been released, so go test it! We’ve got a month to fix all the bugs you find and report, so please do so. 🙂 Many of the improvements already made this week pertain to Plasma’s Wayland session which is rapidly becoming usable for more and more people’s daily usage. I’m using it myself as my primary session, and this is pretty painless now. I’m so impressed by how KDE developers have managed to whip it into shape over the last year! The future truly is now, or something.

Lots of other non-Wayland improvements were made as well:

New Features

KCalc now has a history view where you can see all recently-run calculations! (Antonio Prcela, KCalc 21.12):

The standard “Share” menu found in various KDE apps now offers the possibility of generating a QR code when the thing being shared is a URL (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.87):

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

In Gwenview, you can once again switch between the zoom modes with keyboard shortcuts after this broke recently (Eugene Popov, Gwenview 21.08.2)

The Previous and Next buttons in Elisa’s player control bar no longer inappropriately become disabled while the current track is paused (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 21.08.2)

Okular no longer lets you try to save over a read-only file, and instead prompts you to save the file elsewhere (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 21.08.2)

In the Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer crashes when you disconnect a Bluetooth drawing tablet (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23)

System Settings no longer sometimes crashes when deleting certain cursor themes (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

System Settings is now much faster to open top-level categories that have several sub-pages in them (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, copying text from XWayland apps while Klipper’s “Prevent empty selection” setting is in use now works (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, long menus in apps and sub-menus of the Kicker menu are no longer covered up by Plasma Panels (Andrey Butirsky, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, full-screen Chrome web apps should now display properly (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, windows that open to a size which is larger than the area they would be maximized to now get resized down to fit in that area (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, transparent Plasma themes now display transparency correctly when using the proprietary NVIDIA driver (Severin van Wnuck, Plasma 5.23)

Plasma Vaults no longer fail to mount if the mountpoint has a hidden .directory file in it because you browsed that location when using per-directory view settings while the Vault was unmounted (Tom Zander, Plasma 5.23)

Cursor themes with only one size now cause only the size combobox on System Settings’ Cursors page to be disabled, rather than all of the controls on its row (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.23)

The Link and Active Text colors are now readable in all four Breeze color schemes, fixing issues of unreadable text for apps that were using this color role. Note that you will need to re-apply the color scheme manually to pick up the changes due to this issue (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

The very minimal contents of System Settings’ own settings window has been moved into its hamburger menu to make access more direct (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.24):

The properties dialog once again shows the filename for read-only files (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.87)

File ACLs set via the properties dialog now get applied correctly if you re-open the properties dialog right after changing them (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.87)

Expandable list items in the System Tray once again reserve enough space in the highlight effect to show all of the buttons inside it (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.87)

Some textual headers in Kirigami-based apps that were supposed to be hidden are once again hidden (Devin Lin, Frameworks 5.87)

Narrow and mobile-style form layouts in Kirigami apps now have the correct spacing between items within groups (Ismael Asensio, Frameworks 5.87)

User Interface Improvements

Konsole’s default toolbar has been drastically improved and simplified by putting all of the layout and split-related items into a dropdown menu button (Nathan Sprangers, Konsole 21.12):

Gwenview no longer inappropriately switches to Browse mode when you press the Escape key to close the zoom level combobox’s popup (Gleb Popov, Gwenview 21.12)

Info Center’s S.M.A.R.T. Status page now lets you see more detailed nerdy information if you want (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.23)

System Settings’ sidebar is now fully keyboard navigable with just the arrow keys (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.23)

The Breeze application style has gained the ability to display views in older QtWidgets-based apps with a more “frameless” style, such that adjacent views are separated from one another with a single separator line rather than inset frames, just like they are in our more modern QtQuick apps. Apps will need to opt into this change, and they will start doing so over the course of the next year or so (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.24):

It’s now possible to navigate between sidebar list items in Kirigami-based apps using the arrow and enter/return keys (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.87)

We have reverted the recent change to use a gear-style spinner in Plasma for app loading and other spinning progress indicators. It looked okay in some contexts, but not others. We will find a better way (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.87)

The Breeze icon theme now features icons for all of the different types of Godot Engine files (Michael Alexsander, Frameworks 5.87):

…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.

…Including many for the Plasma Wayland session! It’s finally reaching stability. I’m using it myself as a daily driver now. At this point my biggest annoyances are all with 3rd-party apps, not any KDE software. I know it’s taken a while, but I think we’re very nearly there!

Anyway, check out the full list:

New Features

When you click the Apply button in System Settings’ Display Configuration page, it now offers to revert any changed settings that could result in brokenness, and does so automatically in 30 seconds to handle the case where the new settings are so messed up that you can’t even see anything (Chris Rizzitello and Zixing Liu, Plasma 5.23):

In the Plasma Wayland session, it is now possible to adjust the Intel GPU driver’s Broadcast RGB settings (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.23)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Renaming a file or folder that matches the current filter text in Dolphin now causes the file or folder to correctly disappear from view when its new name no longer matches the filter text (Eugene Popov, Dolphin 21.08.1)

Dolphin no longer crashes if you try to do something crazy like make the trash entry in the Places panel point to /dev/null, or otherwise edit any entry to point to a location that does not technically or actually exist (Jan Paul Batrina, Dolphin 21.12)

Dolphin no longer sometimes fails to open the terminal app when you use its “Open in Terminal” action (me: Nate Graham, 21.12, though I have encouraged distros to cherry-pick it to 21.08)

Icons for remote folders in Dolphin now always have the correct icon (Méven Car, Dolphin 21.12)

Removable devices, discs, and SD cards once again appear as expected in the Disks & Devices applet after being unplugged and then re-plugged (Fabio Bas, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, you can now drag-and-drop stuff between native Wayland and XWayland apps! (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, it’s now possible to change the screen resolution when run in a virtual machine (Méven Car, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, virtual desktops are now remembered on a per-activity basis (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23)

In System Monitor and the Plasma applets of the same name, the “GPU Usage” sensor is no longer incorrectly represented as always being 100% full, “Total Disk Space” is no longer incorrectly computed when there are encrypted disks present, and the “Uptime” sensor no longer disappears after Plasma is restarted (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23)

Notifications sent by Flatpak’d apps are now correctly identified with the sending app (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.23)

The Plasma wallpaper chooser no longer displays a cut-off placeholder label when there are no wallpapers in any of the configured search locations (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

In System Settings’ Users page, the list item for your user no longer looks weird if you haven’t filled in a real name (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

System Monitor and the Plasma applets of the same name now discover more AMD GPU sensor data (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23)

Fixed multiple issues affecting NVIDIAs GPU users in a Plasma Wayland session, such as windows failing to update their content after being resized and KRunner never showing any search results (David Redondo, Frameworks 5.86)

Currency conversion in KRunner and Kickoff (e.g, type “500 USD” or “500 JPY in EUR”) now works again (Andreas Cord-Landwehr, Frameworks 5.86)

System Tray applets with expandable list items are now fully interactive when using a stylus and no longer sometimes bizarrely exhibit overlapping content when there is enough stuff in the popup to make it scrollable (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.86)

Applications launched from a global shortcut now appear as expected in System Monitor’s “Applications” page (David Redondo and Nikos Chantziaras, Frameworks 5.86)

Kirigami-using apps are now significantly faster to launch (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.86)

There is now a default keyboard shortcut to open the “Configure keyboard shortcuts” window: Ctrl+Alt+Comma. Yo dawg, I heard you like keyboard shortcuts… (Someone going by the pseudonym “empeyreal one”, Frameworks 5.86)

In the Plasma Wayland Session, images copied from Spectacle now appear correctly (Jan Blackquill, Qt 6.2 or Qt 5.15.3 with the KDE patch collection)

User Interface Improvements

Double-clicking on the splitter in Dolphin’s split view now resets it to the middle (Eugene Popov, Dolphin 21.12)

Konsole no longer confuses you by letting you try to edit the read-only built-in profile; instead the menu item to do so now says “Create new Profile” and takes you to the place where you can make a new profile (Ahmad Samir, Konsole 21.12)

In the Plasma Wayland session, dragging a file over another window no longer immediately raises that window; there’s now a delay like there is in the X11 session (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.22.5)

When using offline updates (the style of update where everything is applied on the next reboot), Discover no longer irritatingly and aggressively asks you to reboot, since you can safely take your time about it (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

System Settings’ Audio page now integrates all of the few functions of the configure page into the relevant items of the main view that they affect, making them easier to access and removing a sub-page (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.23):

Folder View icons /icons on the desktop now wrap their text at CamelCase word boundaries, like Dolphin’s icon view does (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.23):

The background blur effect is no longer so grainy on Wayland (Tatsuyuki Ishi, Plasma 5.23)

System Tray popups with expandable list items are now much improved in their visual consistency, scroll responsiveness, keyboard navigability, and overall stability (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.86)

Throughout various QtQuick-based software, buttons that are showing both an icon and text no longer display a redundant tooltip that duplicates the button’s text; now they only show this when the button’s text has been auto-hidden due to space constraints (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.86)

…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.

New Features

System Settings’ Colors page now lets you optionally choose an “accent color” that’s different from the one shipped in your color scheme (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.23):

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Dolphin no longer crashes on quit when the embedded terminal panel is open (Ahmad Samir, Dolphin 21.08.1)

Elisa’s Files view now works again (Bart De Vries, Elisa 21.08.1)

Elisa’s in-app “next track” and “previous track” shortcuts (Ctrl+right/left arrow) are now listed correctly in the settings window (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 21.08.1)

You can once again rename items from Dolphin’s Folders panel context menu (Jan Paul Batrina, Dolphin 21.08.1)

Spectacle’s “Automatically copy to clipboard after taking screenshot” feature now works properly in the Plasma Wayland session (Méven Car, Spectacle 21.08.1)

Spectacle’s “Open Containing Folder” action now opens the correct location after the screenshot has been copied to the clipboard rather than manually or automatically saved anywhere (Jan Paul Batrina, Spectacle 21.12)

Dolphin no longer unnecessarily opens a new window after compressing or extracting files in Ark using the context menu action (Alexander Lohnau, Dolphin 21.08.1)

Dolphin’s “Reset Zoom Level” action now works when file previews are disabled (Eugene Popov, Dolphin 21.08.1)

In the Plasma Wayland session, users of version 470 and beyond of the proprietary NVIDIA drivers will no longer suffer from XWayland app windows displaying vertically mirrored or blacked-out content (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.22.4)

System Monitor no longer sometimes crashes when viewing the Processes page (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.23)

Plasma no longer hangs when accessing the clipboard applet or popup menu if any of the entries are extremely long (Someone going by the pseudonym “ValdikSS”, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, the Task Manager now shows feedback on app icons when you click on them to launch apps, just like it does on in the X11 session! (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.23)

The System Settings Night Color page no longer begins geolocating using a 3rd-party service immediately upon opening, and instead only does it when needed (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.23)

The screen locker background is no longer sometimes misaligned in multi-screen setups (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

Multi-screen layouts are now retained across X11 and Wayland sessions (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

System Monitor now remembers which page you were last on when re-opened as a part of session restoration (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

Discover is now a bit faster to launch and load its initial view (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23)

System Monitor now reports CPU information correctly on FreeBSD systems (Adriaan de Groot, Plasma 5.23)

Fixed two substantial memory leaks that could affect Plasma and Plasma widgets (Matt Whitlock, Frameworks 5.86)

When using an app with a hamburger menu on its toolbar that is provided by the KHamburgerMenu control, a duplicate copy of the menu structure no longer also appears in the context menu when you are using a Global Menu applet too (gosh, so many ways to display menus) (Felix Ernst, Frameworks 5.86)

User Interface Improvements

The playback and volume sliders in Elisa now correctly react to your color scheme (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 21.12)

The buttons in Elisa’s Playlist have been re-arranged so that there is room to show labels for them when space is available, and they are now responsive: when there isn’t space for labels, they become icons-only buttons again (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 21.12):

The icons in KolourPaint’s “Rotate” dialog now look good and follow the icon theme (Kai Uwe Broulik, KolourPaint 21.12)

The System Settings Night Color page now tells you when you’re about to undertake an action that will perform geolocation using a 3rd-party service (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.23):

In System Settings’ Feedback page, you can now see a historical record of what data (if anything) has been sent to KDE (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23)

When rotating the screen in the Plasma Wayland session–either manually or automatically according to the device’s orientation sensor–there is now an animated transition between the old and new rotations (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23)

The “clear text” button inside text fields throughout Plasma and QtQuick apps is now the same size that it is in QtWidgets apps (Devin Lin, Frameworks 5.86)

Various bookmark-themed Breeze icons are now visually differentiated from one another (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.86)

…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.

I have exciting news: this week the long-awaited new QML-based Overview effect has been merged! Currently it shows you all your open windows, just like the existing Present Windows effect–which it will eventually replace. And it does not dim the inactive/un-hovered windows. :)The visuals are not final, but here’s what it looks like so far:

Vlad Zahorodnii has been doing this work and it is still in the latter stages of development, but will eventually replace the existing Present Windows effect and probably the Desktop Grid effect as well, unifying them both into a full-screen overview of windows, Virtual Desktops and perhaps Activities too! The idea is to show you all your relevant window-related functionality in one place, similar to the popular 3rd-party Parachute KWin script, or macOS’s Mission Control overlay. It will ship in Plasma 5.23 and will need plenty of testing! So I would encourage everyone to try it out! To test it, install git master packages from your distro’s unstable repo or build everything from source or use KDE Neon Unstable or openSUSE Krypton. Then enable the Overview effect in the System Settings Desktop Effects page and invoke it with Meta+Ctrl+D.

New Features

You can now choose the status of your Bluetooth adapter on login: powered on, powered off, or remember the state it was in the last time the system was rebooted (the latter option is the new default) (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23):

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Spectacle once again takes screenshots with the correct resolution in a Plasma Wayland session using a fractional scale factor such as 125% (Méven Car, Spectacle 21.08.1)

Fixed a regression in how Breeze theme window decoration buttons were rendered in GTK CSD headerbar windows (Emilio Cobos Álvarez, Plasma 5.22.5)

System Monitor no longer fails to display IPv4 address information when IPv6 has been disabled (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22.5)

Fixed one of the ways that the lock screen could get broken on Wayland (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, middle-click-paste now works between native Wayland and XWayland apps! (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, copying text from notifications using any means now works (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, DPI-based scaling once again works (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, the cursor now shows animated icon feedback when launching apps (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23)

Combobox popups in QtQuick apps now look correct in RTL languages (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.86)

User Interface Improvements

You can now copy text from Plasma notifications with the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23)

Dragging windows around now only snaps them to the edges of other windows that are on the same virtual desktop (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.23)

You can now change the manual speed setting for wired Ethernet connections to more values (David Hummel, Plasma 5.23)

The Global Menu applet now has a more menu-like appearance (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.23)

The Media Player widget now always displays the album art and its blurred background at the same time, even when the album art is read from a slow location (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.23)

The loading spinner has been unified across Plasma, KDE apps, and the splash screen, and it now looks like a spinning gear! (Björn Feber, Plasma 5.23 and Frameworks 5.86)

Shadows for Plasma popups, dialogs, OSDs, and notifications have been made a little bit more soft, visually pleasing, and more consistent with the shadows for app windows (Niccolò Venerandi, Frameworks 5.86):

…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.

Continuing with our recent theme, this week KDE contributors squashed an astonishing number of bugs! In addition, we rolled out some nice UI changes that I think folks will enjoy and which make Plasma and KDE software more usable on those touchscreen devices that are becoming more ubiquitous all the time.

New Features

Elisa now lets you rate songs inline from in the playlist and the Now Playing page, rather than needing to go to the info window to do it (me: Nate Graham, and Javier Goday, Elisa 21.12):

The Plasma wallpaper slideshow configuration page now has an option to display all of the wallpapers in each folder before moving onto the wallpapers in the next folder (Mihai Sorin Dobrescu, Plasma 5.23)

The Networks applet now supports additional authentication settings/protocols/requirements for OpenVPN connections (Jan Grulich, Plasma 5.23)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

In the Plasma Wayland session, Spectacle no longer shows you an error message when you cancel the process of taking a screenshot in the middle (Bharadwaj Raju, Spectacle 21.08.1)

Elisa no longer shows a “Show in Folder” button on the Now Playing page for radio streams (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 21.08.1)

Konsole no longer sometimes flashes when its last tab/session is closed with the Ctrl+D keyboard shortcut (Tomaz Canabrava, Konsole 21.12)

Closing a Konsole tab when something is written on the prompt is now faster (Christoph Cullmann, Konsole 21.12)

Plasma’s panel edit mode now lets you move, configure, and remove applets with a touchscreen (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22.5)

When you rotate Widget on the desktop by 90°, the tooltip for the Rotate button no longer covers up the Configure button and prevents its use (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22.5)

When showing scrollbar arrows, the arrows themselves now show the correct hover color in QtQuick-based apps (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.22.5)

When the feature to show popup previews of desktop folders has been disabled, those popups no longer appear when dragging something into a folder either (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

When you attempt to move or copy a file or folder onto a different filesystem that has any characters in its name that are incompatible for that filesystem, you are now warned of this fact and offered the opportunity to correct it, rather than the files or folders being silently transferred with invalid characters and being un-openable (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.86)

The calendar no longer shows the wrong number of dots on each day/month/year under certain circumstances when it is pinned open (Eugene Popov, Frameworks 5.86)

The “Allow Folder Expansion” option in open/save dialogs is now respected in all relevant contexts (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.86)

Headers in QtQuick-based System Settings pages no longer disappear when you scroll up the view using a touchscreen (Jan Blackquill, Frameworks 5.86)

Scroll handles in QtQuick-based apps no longer incorrectly interpret a click at the very top of the handle as a click in the track (Jan Blackquill, Frameworks 5.86)

It’s now possible to edit the icons for system-installed applications through Kickoff’s “Edit Application…” menu (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.86)

The “Units” definitions for QtQuick-based software have been re-implemented in C++, which should provide a small boost to performance and launch speed for all QtQuick-based KDE software (Jonah Brüchert and Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.86)

User Interface Improvements

Breeze style spinboxes now locate the up and down arrows on either side of the text area in a bigger and more button-like clickable area, providing for a much more usable click target and also making the control touch-friendly (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.23):

The Breeze style scrollbar handle has been updated to match the new style for other UI elements: now it is slightly thicker (though the width of the track it sits in is still the same thickness) and has a more visually refined appearance (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.23):

^{Oh and we’re looking to get rid of the controversial scrollbar divider line too, once we change our list highlights to be more Plasma-style!}

In the Plasma Wayland session, entering tablet mode with a convertible laptop now automatically causes the System Tray icons to become larger and therefore more tappable (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23):

^{Please pardon the atrocious quality of this video; capturing something like this on camera is a bit hard! Look at the System Tray icons in the bottom left corner of the video.}

Pressing-and-holding with a finger in Kickoff now opens the context menu (Devin Lin, Plasma 5.23)

The PageUp and PageDown keys now work to scroll the table views in System Monitor (Felipe Kinoshita, Plasma 5.23)

In Kickoff, hitting the return or enter key while a UI control (such as one of the power buttons) has been tab-focused no longer unexpectedly launches the last-focused app in the grid or list above it (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

The Networks applet’s details tab now shows more information about the currently-connected network, when available (Francesco Bonanno, Plasma 5.23)

The “Public” and “Templates” folders now show nice new icons (Björn Feber, Frameworks 5.86):

…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 a major bugfix week, with many important fixes to our core apps as well as the touchscreen experience. More of these are in the pipeline too! We are really trying to improve the stability of our software now that it’s starting to be used in more 3rd-party products like the Steam Deck. The idea is that this will become a virtuous circle of better more stable products leading to more use leading to even better more stable products! So check it out:

New Features

Kate now lets you open multiple tabs in its embedded terminal views (Waqar Ahmed, Kate 21.12)

It’s now possible to configure whether hidden files are shown before or after other files in Dolphin, and the default is “before”, as it used to be (Chris Holland, Dolphin 21.12):

You can now delete selected items in the Clipboard applet’s popup by pressing the Delete key on the keyboard (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

The “Get new [thing]” window now has a feature to let you begin the process of uploading your own contributions to store.kde.org! (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.85):

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Dolphin once again restores the window and sidebar to the correct sizes after being un-maximized (Felix Ernst, Dolphin 21.08)

Dolphin’s --select argument now does what you expect: it selects the file in the window rather than opening it and showing Dolphin with an empty window (Jordan Bucklin, Dolphin 21.08)

Okular’s page number counter now always has enough space to display the full page number no matter how many pages the document has (Kishore Gopalakrishnan, Okular 21.08)

Elisa’s desktop config window is now able to scroll vertically in situations where this would be required, for example due to long translated test or many configured search locations for the music library (me: Nate graham, Elisa 21.08)

Konsole no longer sometimes crashes when closing a tab (Ahmad Samir, Konsole 21.12)

Konsole’s “Show Statusbar” menu item now works (Ahmad Samir, Konsole 21.12)

Fixed various recent regressions affecting Yakuake: it once again slides out properly and no longer flashes blue while closing (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22.5)

System Monitor’s “Export Page” function now works (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22.5)

Some of Discover’s user interface elements now show their shortcut keys in their tooltips, rather than showing random numbers (Aleix Pol Gonzalez and me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22.5)

The header in the Digital Clock’s calendar popup now looks correct in right-to-left text mode (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22.5)

When you have a lot of different timezones defined in the Digital Clock’s calendar popup, the list is now scrollable when needed (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22.5)

The window maximization and full screen effects now cross-fade again (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22.5)

Plasma’s “Alternatives” popup no longer lets long labels visually overflow; now list items become as tall as is needed to contain them (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22.5):

Task Manager tooltips for pinned apps now disappear when you move the cursor over them, just like all other tooltips do (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22.5)

Fixed a case where KWin could crash when pressing Alt+Tab to activate the Task Switcher (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma X11 session, touchscreen input now works properly when the Wacom System Settings module is installed (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, clicking in a virtual machine window now results in the click targeting the correct region of the screen in the guest OS (Andrey Butirsky, Plasma 5.23)

Discover is now faster to launch, especially on low-resource devices like the PinePhone (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23)

Discover’s “Install” buttons no longer sometimes overflow from their parent layout when the application in question comes from a non-default backend with a very long name; now the name is shown in a tooltip rather than in the button text when it is very long (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23):

Discover’s app screenshots view no longer shows arrow buttons to navigate left and right when the view is non-scrollable (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

You can now enter decimal values for manual chart data ranges in System Monitor (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.23)

Items on the desktop once again get thumbnails automatically generated for them (Marcin Gurtowski, Frameworks 5.85)

Kirigami apps and views that are non-scrollable no longer awkwardly teleport the view contents to the bottom of the view when the down arrow button is pressed (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.85)

Plasma text fields now always have the correct text color even when using themes which use strongly contrasting colors for the window background vs the view background, such as Oxygen (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.85)

Close buttons in Kirigami inline messages no longer overlap the action button beneath them when using certain font sizes (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.85)

The Breeze icon theme is no longer missing network and hibernation-related icons when used in XFCE (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.85)

User Interface Improvements

When Dolphin is launched with any tabs showing paths that are not accessible, it now returns to the previous behavior of telling you that the path is not available rather than discarding the path data and showing you your home folder instead (me: Nate Graham, Dolphin 21.08)

When selecting an online account to log into on the System Settings Accounts page, now nothing is pre-selected, and clicking on one of the accounts in the list no longer leaves it selected if you cancel the authentication prompt (Mufeed Ali, kaccounts-integration 21.12)

When you press-and-hold on a desktop widget with a finger on the touchscreen, the icons in the overlay are now sized in a manner appropriate for touch interaction (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22.5):

The DrKonqi crash reporter no longer lets users waste their own time by filing worthless bug reports against unmaintained apps and ancient unmaintained versions of developed apps, and instead recommends that they find a new app or upgrade, respectively (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.23)

The System Settings Login Screen page’s settings synchronization feature has now been renamed to “Apply Plasma Settings” to clarify what it does (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23):

Dialogs for various file operations now word-wrap the text so they never become too wide and get cut off when displaying extremely long file paths (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.85)

…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 two particularly large things to present! Not Steam Deck levels of large, but still pretty cool, I think. 🙂

First of all, David Redondo and Kai Uwe Broulik implemented the power profiles feature! This allows you to specify how your computer should balance energy use against performance. You can switch modes at any time using the Battery and Brightness applet, and you can configure which profile gets used automatically when plugging or unplugging the power cord. The feature will be available in Plasma 5.23 with a newer computer that supports it when using Linux Kernel 5.12 or greater.

---

Next, the new Kickoff launcher menu that was introduced in Plasma 5.20 has received a gigantic code overhaul which fixes many bugs, improves performance and accessibility, tightens up the user interface, and adds a few commonly requested features. Among the fixes:

• Long text for the power/session items in the footer or items in the sidebar is no longer ever elided; instead the layout stretches horizontally to accommodate them
• Using the arrow keys to navigate the search results list no longer discards the first keystroke
• The context menu no longer takes ages to appear
• The popup now always opens instantly
• There is no longer an awkward animation when you open the popup if you happened to be on the Places tab the last time it was closed
• Alt+letter accelerators are now stable and consistent
• Two-line grid item labels are no longer closer to the icon above them than single-line grid item titles are
• The layout is no longer flipped vertically depending on the popup’s position on the screen
• The Configure button no longer retains keyboard focus if it is clicked and the popup is closed
• You can now choose whether to use a list or a grid for all app views, not just the Favorites category
• A Pin button has been added, so you can now pin it open if you like–just like you can do for the System Tray, Digital Clock, and KRunner

Here’s how it looks now:

Big thanks to Noah Davis for completing this exhaustive change! It will be released in Plasma 5.23.

More New Features

You can now configure whether the footer action buttons in Kickoff have text or not, and you can opt to show all the power and session actions at once if you prefer (Maxim Leshchenko, Plasma 5.23):

Sensor labels in System Monitor can now be changed and given custom text (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23)

The System Settings Login Screen page’s synchronization feature now syncs your screen arrangement as well, so that the login screen UIs are positioned properly on all your physical screens (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23):

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Konsole’s window is no longer a tiny tiny rectangle the first time you launch the app (Konsole 21.08)

Okular now scrolls by the correct distance using the PageUp/PageDown keys when its scrollbars are disabled (David Hurka, Okular 21.08)

The “Start a Slideshow” menu item in Dolphin’s context menu is now translated (Yuri Chornoivan, Gwenview 21.08)

Opening the Digital Clock applet’s settings dialog no longer closes the applet’s popup if it has been deliberately pinned open (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22.3)

When using systemd-homed, entering your password incorrectly once on the login screen no longer causes all subsequent unlock attempts to fail (Gibeom Gwon, Plasma 5.22.4)

The Bluetooth widget now works properly when placed directly on the Panel, as opposed to when it lives in the System Tray (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.22.4)

System Monitor is now hugely faster to launch (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22.4)

The grid items in the System Tray’s expanded popup are now always perfectly pixel-aligned so they will not become blurry (Derek Christ, Plasma 5.22.4)

Using QTimer in KWin script now works again (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22.4)

In the context menu for desktop items, pressing the shift key to switch between “Move to Trash” and “Delete” now works when a sub-menu is open (Derek Christ, Plasma 5.22.4)

Global shortcuts for apps whose desktop files have uppercase characters in their filenames now work properly, and their entries in the System Settings Shortcuts page now always display the correct icons (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22.4)

Plasma Notifications with embedded links now use the link color from the Plasma theme rather than the application color scheme, fixing bugs in cases where these differed such as when the Breeze Twilight theme is applied (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.22.4)

Category lists in the Unsplash Picture of the Day wallpaper’s configuration page are now sorted alphabetically, rather than semi-randomly (Arnaud Vergnet, Plasma 5.22.4)

Website Favicons displayed in KRunner that come from a browser using Plasma Browser Integration are now nice and crisp when using a high DPI scale factor (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.22.4)

Opening the System Settings User Feedback page no longer briefly makes Discover appear in the Task Manager (Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, global shortcuts once again work while popups that would otherwise steal focus (on X11) are open (Andrey Butirsky, Plasma 5.23)

Fixed a case where searching in Dolphin could cause the kdeinit5 process to crash (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.85)

User Interface Improvements

Dolphin’s Places panel now elides text when it’s not wide enough to show everything, rather than showing a horizontal scrollbar (Eugene Popov, Dolphin 21.08):

Every one of Dolphin’s zoom levels now has a different icon size associated with it; no longer will changing the zoom level sometimes cause the size of the grid to change but the icons stay the same size (Eugene Popov, Dolphin 21.12)

Panels using the Adaptive Transparency feature now enter transparent mode when the Show Desktop effect is in use (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22.4)

When multiple devices are mounted, the Device Notifier applet now shows the “Unmount All” action inside the hamburger menu instead of as the lone button on a new toolbar that appears (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.23):

When browsing app lists in Discover, the icon of the source that the app comes from is now displayed inside the button that also lists the name of the source (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23):

The Kimpanel candidates popup now looks better (Mufeed Ali, Plasma 5.23):

The question mark button in the titlebar is now hidden by default for dialog windows (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23)

Discover no longer misleadingly shows the wrong date of last update for apps that fail to provide this information themselves (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23)

In System Monitor, the app-specific process list view now sorts by memory usage by default, just like it does elsewhere (Felipe Kinoshita, Plasma 5.23)

Event indicator dots on the Plasma Calendar widget and the Digital Clock popup are now more visible no matter what color scheme or Plasma theme you’re using (Carl Schwan, Frameworks 5.85)

Kirigami-based apps’ “About” pages now display a “Get Involved” link that takes you to https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved (Felipe Kinoshita, Frameworks 5.85):

…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.