This week a big new feature landed for Plasma 5.20: the System Settings app now has the ability to optionally highlight any settings you’ve changed from their default states! This required a ton of engineering throughout the stack which will pay many dividends down the road. For example, it opens the door to a global “reset to defaults” button now that all of the pages know what their default states actually are and take into account distro default settings, rather than always using KDE upstream defaults. Big thanks to Kevin Ottens, Benjamin Port, and Cyril Rossi, who made this happen.

But that’s not all we have for you this week; in fact, there’s a gigantic amount more:

New Features

Konsole now has an option in the Profile > Appearance tab to display a vertical line at a user-specified position (defaulting to 80 characters) which can help you when typing text that should be manually line-wrapped (Tomaz Canabrava, Konsole 20.12.0)

The System Settings Autostart page has been rewritten from scratch and now features a much better user interface (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.20)

The System Settings “Global Shortcuts” and “Standard Shortcuts” pages have been merged into one, which is now called “Shortcuts” (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

The Battery & Brightness applet now shows a quick link to the Energy Information page (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

Added a small command-line utility program that can be used to inhibit screen locking, power off, etc. For example: kde-inhibit --screensaver --power sleep 100 (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.20)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Okular’s document bookmarks feature now works even when a document is opened via a symbolic link (Okular 1.12)

Dolphin now notices and updates the view when files are added or removed from a Samba share (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.12)

Pasting a file on the desktop when a folder is selected now pastes it into that folder, as expected (Grégoire Duvauchelle, Plasma 5.20)

The arrow keys now work for navigation through the default task switcher (Igor Grkavac, Plasma 5.20)

When executing commands with KRunner, prefixing the commands with environment variables now works as expected (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

On Discover’s settings page, the “Add Flathub” button only appears when the Flathub repo isn’t already there (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.20)

Kate and other KTextEditor-based apps are now up to 40% faster to open large files (Tomaz Canabrava, Frameworks 5.74)

When you connect to a Google account using the System Settings Online Accounts page, the dialog that asks you which features of the account to access is now readable when using a dark theme (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.74)

ToolButtons using the older PlasmaComponents2 UI library are once again displayed at the correct size (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.74)

The Get New [Thing] dialogs no longer erroneously always show the first item as selected when using Icons view (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.74)

User Interface Improvements

When attempting to create a Samba share, any errors encountered during the process are now displayed so you can troubleshoot the issue (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.12)

Spectacle now lets you take a screenshot on Wayland without needing to click first to confirm it (Méven Car, Spectacle 20.12)

Elisa now has an option (off by default) to immediately resume playback on launch. The last playback position is still always remembered of course (Stef Lep, Elisa 20.12)

In Elisa, the “previous track” action now returns to the beginning of the current track the first time you hit it and only goes to the previous track if the current track’s playback is within the first two seconds, just like how most other music players do it (Step Lef, Elisa 20.12)

The print queue window now makes the “Hold” and “Resume” actions mutually exclusive so only one is visible at a time (Jan Paul Batrina, Print Manager 20.12)

Toolbar buttons with text which display drop-down menus when clicked now display little arrows next to the text so you can tell this (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.20)

The Kickoff Application Launcher now uses a standard-looking background area for its header area (Carl Schwan, Plasma 5.20)

Pinning an app to Kicker or Kickoff no longer subsequently closes it (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

The System Settings Cursors page now uses the “pending deletion” paradigm used in other grid view pages, rather than showing you a “confirm deletion?” dialog box (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

The Energy settings page accessible from the Battery & Brightness applet no longer has an unnecessary scrollbar (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

Un-connected Bluetooth devices in the Bluetooth applet no longer show a pointless “disconnected” emblem in the corner because they’re already grouped in a separate section (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

Centered notification pop-ups are now a little less wide. They’re still wider than they were in Plasma 5.18 and before, but not quite as wide as they were in Plasma 5.19, which was considered just too wide. Man, the word “wide” is a strange word. Don’t you agree? (Riccardo Robecchi, Plasma 5.20)

Header text for pages in System Settings is now always the same size no matter if the page’s user interface was written in QML or QWidgets (Ismael Asensio, Frameworks 5.74)

Creating a new file or folder with spaces in the name no longer briefly shows an annoying message warning you that the name ends with a space every time you type the space between words; instead, it simply automatically removes all trailing spaces (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.74)

ToolButtons throughout Plasma that currently retain focus when clicked on no longer do so, mirroring the behavior seen with ToolButtons in apps written with QWidgets or QML with the desktop style (David Redondo, Frameworks 5.74)

Removed the superfluous “Details…” button on the tile items for the Get New [Thing] dialogs because clicking on the tile itself already did the same thing (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.74)

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 got tons and tons of stuff done, including window thumbnails on Wayland! This much-awaited feature brings our Wayland session ever closer to parity with the X11 session. But wait, there’s more:

New Features

Konsole now lets you configure how dark inactive terminals become when using the “darken inactive terminals” feature (Tomaz Canabrava, Konsole 20.12.0)

Task Manager window thumbnails now work on Wayland! (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.20)

Discover can now be used to perform updates of content downloaded through the Get New Stuff dialogs (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Plasma 5.20)

Plasma applets now feature an “About” page in their settings windows (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

Kate and other KTextEditor-based apps now show a zoom indicator in the status bar when the current zoom level is not 100% (Jan Paul Batrina, Frameworks 5.74)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Opening an audio file from the filesystem in Elisa from Dolphin or KRunner or another app now works (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 20.08.0)

Switching screens while in Okular’s Presentation Mode now works (David Hurka, Okular 20.08.0)

Fixed a case where KWin could crash when logging out of a Wayland session (Andrey Butirsky, Plasma 5.20)

In a Plasma Wayland session, XWayland no longer brings down the whole session when it crashes; it just restarts normally (Vlad Zahorodniy, Plasma 5.20)

Changing the list of active KRunner plugins now takes effect immediately rather than requiring KRunner to be restarted (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

The Search widget now respects the current list of active KRunner plugins (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

The mouse cursor no longer sometimes gets stuck when using screen rotation on Wayland (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.20)

Edge swipe gestures and showing a hidden panel by tapping the screen edge now work on Wayland (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.20)

Adding a new network interface no longer messes up the display in the Networks system monitor (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.20)

Changing the systemwide scale factor now invalidates the Plasma SVG cache, causing SVG-based user interface elements throughout Plasma to be re-drawn with the correct scale, which should fix a wide variety of minor graphical glitches seen after changing the scale factor (David Edmundson, Frameworks 5.74)

The Baloo file indexer now skips files that repeatedly fail to index rather than repeatedly trying to re-index them anyway and failing in a loop that trashes your CPU (Stefan Brüns, Frameworks 5.74),

User Interface Improvements

When applying a tag to a file in Dolphin, if the tags menu only had one item in it, it now automatically closes after applying the tag (Ismael Asensio, Dolphin 20.08.0)

The current date is now shown in the Digital Clock applet by default (Claudius Ellsel, Plasma 5.20)

Animation speeds throughout the Breeze Widgets and Decoration themes now respect the global animation speed (Martin Sandsmark and Marco Martin, Plasma 5.20)

It’s now possible to do multiplication in KRunner using “x” as the multiplication operator, not just “*” (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

KRunner now shows tooltips for entries that don’t entirely fit, so you now have a way to read the dictionary text (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

Minimizing a window no longer puts it at the very end of the Task Switcher; it now moves to the next position and there is no special handling (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

Made various fixes and improvements to the Breeze GTK theme: Sidebars in GTK Assistant are now readable, floating status bars are no longer transparent, the window shadow now matches that of KDE apps, and pop-up shadows now look nicer (Carson Black, Plasma 5.20)

The Get New [Thing] Windows now display more appropriate icons for their Update and Uninstall actions (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.74)

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 got a big improvement in how the Task Manager handles grouped tasks: by default, it activates the last-used task and then cycles through other tasks if you continue to click on it. There are also some more welcome improvements for the “Get New [Thing]” system, as well as a nice smattering of miscellany. Take a look:

New Features

MP4 video files now show the embedded cover art image when it’s available and previews are enabled (Heiko Schaefer, Dolphin 20.12.0)

The Task Manager now defaults to cycling through child tasks when clicking on a grouped task, and always display the most-recently-used one when switching to a task from an app that’s different from the current one. All of this may sound awfully complicated, but hopefully it’s exactly what you wanted it to do all along. 🙂 (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

Discover now shows updates for add-ons installed via the “Get New [Thing]” windows (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Plasma 5.20)

The System Settings Accessibility page is now available on Wayland (Michael Weghorn, Plasma 5.20)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Fixed a weird bug in Elisa whereby the backgrounds of volume and track progress sliders were drawn in the wrong places (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 20.08.0)

Elisa’s album art displays are no longer downscaled and pixelated for albums where the art is integrated into the music files themselves (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 20.08.0)

Fixed the “Windows can cover” panel setting on Wayland (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.20)

Fixed a few visual glitches that can appear when downloading items using the Get New [Thing] dialogs (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.73)

User Interface Improvements

Using Konsole’s --new tab argument now brings the existing instance into focus as well (Martin Rys, Konsole 20.08.0)

When opening a file from a Flatpak app like Dolphin and there is no locally-installed application that can handle it, the app now directs you to Discover and filters the list of apps shown by MIME Type, so only relevant options are displayed (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.20)

More of the built-in entries in the System Settings Global Shortcuts page now have sensible icons (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20):

The file overwrite dialog now tells you when the two files are actually identical (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.73)

How You Can Help

If you are an experienced developer who would like to make a gigantic impact very quickly, fix some recent Plasma regressions or longstanding bugs. Everyone will love you forever! No really. Sometimes people will mail you beer and everything. It’s happened before!

Beyond that, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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 has seen more fixes and improvements to the Get New Stuff system, as well as speeding up Discover. But they may be overshadowed by Major Enormous Exciting Amazing new Wayland features such as screencasting and Klipper/shared clipboard support!

Oh and two Ryzen-powered KDE Slimbook laptops were released! I wrote a review of the 15.6″ model here. It’s really good.

New Features

Screen recording and screencasting now works on Wayland for compatible applications (e.g. OBS Studio and more to come) (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.20)

Klipper now uses the Wayland clipboard and works as you would expect in a Wayland session (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.20)

The Task Manager and Icons-Only Task Manager now offer you options for what visualization you want to see when clicking on a grouped task: window thumbnails in tooltips, the Present Windows effect, or a textual list (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Spectacle’s --output option now works again (Nazar Kalinowski, Spectacle 20.12.0)

Discover is now radically faster to present a usable user interface after being launched, especially on openSUSE distros (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.20)

The last-used keyboard layout is now remembered on Wayland (Andrey Butirsky, Plasma 5.20)

On a rotatable device, maximized windows now remain maximized when the device is rotated (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.20)

The OK and Cancel buttons in the network hotspot dialog no longer overlap the password field (Rijul Gulati, Plasma 5.20)

Fixed the inline button display for Tiles view in the Get New [Thing] dialog (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.73)

The first entry in the Get New [Thing] dialog is no longer always misleadingly selected (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.73)

It’s now possible to delete an entry that’s upgradeable in the Get New [Thing] dialog (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.73)

The old QWidgets-based Get New [Thing] dialog now lets you choose which thing to install when a thing lists multiple installable things in its thing (so you can thing while you thing) (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.73)

The old QWidgets-based Get New [Thing] dialog no longer changes the width of the main view after you start searching for something (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.73)

User Interface Improvements

Spectacle no longer includes the mouse cursor in screenshots by default (Antonio Prcela, Spectacle 20.08.0)

KInfoCenter no longer shows useless “Defaults” “Reset” and “Apply” buttons at the bottom of the window (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

Line and bar charts used in system monitor widgets now display grid lines and Y axis labels (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

The “Add Widgets” sidebar has been subtly improved with a third column and a better top layout for the controls (Carson Black, Plasma 5.20)

Dolphin’s context menus now locates the extra actions to open other applications in the base level of the context menu rather than a sub-menu, so long as there are three of them or less (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.73):

How You Can Help

If you are an experienced developer who would like to make a gigantic impact very quickly, fix some recent Plasma regressions or longstanding bugs. Everyone will love you forever! No really. Sometimes people will mail you beer and everything. It’s happened before!

Beyond that, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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.

Do you like more features, fewer bugs, and a better UI? I do. So as I look over this week’s update, I smile. In particular, some much-needed fixes for the Get New [thing] system have landed, and more are on the way. We realize this is a pain point and we’re working on it.

In Plasma, we’ve been actually using Bugzilla’s priority feature to prioritize bugfixes, beginning with recent regressions. Every day I triage all new bugs and mark any recent regressions accordingly, then try to try to track down people who can fix things, or do it myself if I’m able to. Hopefully over time we’ll have fewer regressions, and the ones that do slip through will get fixed faster.

New Features

When drawing annotations in Okular, holding down the Shift key now constrains the new annotation to increments of 15 degrees or perfect squares, as in many drawing apps (Luca Citi, Okular 1.11.0)

Okular now has a new hidden action you can put on its toolbar that will toggle right-to-left reading direction for the current document (David Hurka, Okular 1.11.0)

KRunner can now display bookmarks from Falkon too (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

The Properties Dialog can now also display SHA512 checksums for files (Nazar Kalinowski, Frameworks 5.73)

Bugfixes and performance & security Improvements

Dolphin’s selection highlight in Compact and Details modes is no longer too short (Ismael Asensio, Dolphin 20.08.0)

Fixed a recent regression that caused wallpapers downloaded using the Get New [Thing] dialog to not be apply-able (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.4)

Fixed a recent regression that caused Plasma to overwrite the system locale settings even if nothing had been changed (Plasma 5.19.4)

When decrypting a Plasma Vault, if the password has been made visible, it now becomes hidden again the moment you submit it so that it doesn’t sit around visible yet un-erasable on the screen for a few seconds (Ivan Čukić, Plasma 5.19.4)

The Plasma Networks System Tray applet no longer crashes when clicked if there is an OpenVPN VPN configured (Lamarque Souza, Plasma 5.20.0)

KRunner’s single runner mode now works (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

The KRunner Plasma widget now respects the list of enabled and disabled runners set in System Settings (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

KRunner no longer crashes when you type anything while the PIM Contact Search plugin is active (Friedrich Kossebau, Frameworks 5.73)

When using the Get New [thing] dialog to download new wallpapers, the “Use” button will now actually apply the wallpaper as it should (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.73)

When installing something using the Get New [thing] dialog fails, it is no longer incorrectly marked as installed (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.73)

Get New [thing] dialogs now display the same sort order that the sort order combobox indicates (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.73)

The URL Navigator in Dolphin and the file dialogs and various other KDE apps now has a saner auto-complete behavior (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.73)

Plasma widget pop-ups no longer appear in the Task Switcher (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.73)

User Interface Improvements

FUSE mounts are now automatically excluded from the list of disks visible in the Disk Usage widget (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.20)

The cursor no longer changes in size when hovering over GTK/GNOME app windows (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.20)

After taking into consideration feedback from users and designers, the System Tray icon arrangement options now include a way to return to the old style: one or two rows/columns of small-ish icons that do not scale with panel thickness (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

System Tray popups have been made a little bit taller–just a little bit (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

The System Tray Battery applet now tells you when the power source you’re plugged into isn’t supplying enough power to charge the battery (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

Scrollable pages in Kirigami-based apps can now be scrolled with the arrow keys (Carl Schwan, Frameworks 5.73)

The “Overwrite” action/button used in various places throughout KDE software now has a nice icon (David Hurka, Frameworks 5.73)

When the file type list in open/save dialogs would show multiple entries with the same name, they are now disambiguated by appending the filename extension (Albert Astals Cid, Frameworks 5.73):

The icons-only view buttons in the Get New [thing] dialogs now show tooltips so you can tell what they are (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.73):

How You Can Help

If you are an experienced developer who would like to make a gigantic impact very quickly, fix some recent Plasma regressions or longstanding bugs. Everyone will love you forever!

Beyond that, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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.

Tons and tons of awesome new features and UI polish landed this week, alongside an equally weighty ton of important bugfixes.

New Features

Elisa now lets you optionally display all Genres, Artists, or Albums in the sidebar, below other items (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 20.08.0):

Elisa’s playlist now displays the progress of the currently playing song inline (Stef Lep, Elisa 20.08.0)

Konsole now has a new on-by-default-but-disable-able feature to display a subtle highlight for new lines coming into view when the terminal output is rapidly scrolling by (Thomas Surrel, Konsole 20.08.0)

System Tray icons now automatically scale to fit no matter the panel’s thickness, and you can now choose for yourself how many rows or columns to display if you want (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

Bugfixes & performance Improvements

Dolphin now correctly respects your preference regarding what to do when opening executable files (Wolfgang Bauer, Dolphin 20.04.3)

When typing a search term in Dolphin, the cursor position no longer gets reset after results begin to appear (Ismael Asensio, Dolphin 20.08.0)

Elisa got some high DPI fixes relating to line thicknesses and icon sizes (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 20.08.0)

When using a pen for input on Wayland, the position of the drawn lines is no longer vertically offset by the height of the titlebar (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.19.3)

Applying a Global Theme now also changes the colors appropriately for GTK applications (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.19.4)

KRunner and Kickoff/Kicker/Application Dashboard can once again be used to open settings windows that are not visible directly in System Settings, such as the Trash or Breeze theme settings pages (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.19.4)

The “Text Only” display style for the new system monitor widgets now works properly (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.19.4)

Fixed a crash on Wayland when waking up the computer while multiple screens are attached (Andreas Haratzis, Plasma 5.20)

Fixed a bug that could cause the Task Manager’s icons to be obscured when changing the resolution or display the wrong icons when a screen is turned or of unplugged (Alexander Kandaurov, Plasma 5.20)

The Plasma Widget Explorer only tells you that there’s already an instance of a widget while that widget is visible in the current screen/activity (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

On Wayland, it’s now possible to enter full screen mode in MPV by double-clicking on the video (Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.20.0)

Changing the “Confirm Logout” setting now takes effect immediately, instead of requiring a restart first (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.20.0)

Window decorations now display correctly when using a 30-bit/10-bit-per-color screen (Bernie Innocenti, Plasma 5.20)

Previews for cursor themes now correctly display real-time previews as you hover your cursor over them on Wayland (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

Menu separators in QML-based desktop apps now have the correct height and thickness when using a high DPI screen and a global scale factor (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.73)

Fixed a wide variety of Plasma crashes, in particular with the Thermal Monitor widget (David Edmundson, Frameworks 5.73)

User Interface Improvements

KRDC now displays proper server-side cursors in VNC instead of a small dot with the remote cursor lagging behind it (Oleg Chernovskiy, KRDC 20.08.0):

Yakuake now lets you configure all the keyboard shortcuts that actually come from Konsole (Maximillian Schiller, Yakuake 20.08.0)

The Disk Usage widget now looks more like how it did in Plasma 5.18 and earlier (but still using the fancy new backend, of course) (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.20)

When using the “Raise maximum volume” setting and setting the volume above 100%, the percentage display for the current volume level now changes color to show you that the volume is really really really high (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

• 

• 

The old obsolete System Settings Emoticons page is no more (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.20)

The System Settings Shortcuts page no longer shows mysterious categories such as “KDE Daemon” or “System Settings” for seemingly unrelated actions, and instead groups them all into a new category named “Custom Shortcuts Service” (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

The users list in the lock and login screens can no longer be pointlessly dragged around when there’s only one user (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

How You Can Help

Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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 lot of exciting things are happening behind the scenes these days, but in terms of what landed this week, we focused on bugfixing–including a few nice high DPI fixes–and also got a few nice Dolphin and Konsole features.

New Features

Dolphin now has a new “Copy Location” menu item (Yann Holme-Nielsen, Dolphin 20.08.0):

…And so does Konsole! (Tomaz Canabrava, Konsole 20.08):

Konsole’s split view headers can now be optionally disabled, and the thickness of the separator can be optionally increased (Tomaz Canabrava, Konsole 20.08.0):

Bugfixes & performance Improvements

Various non-default Task Switchers now have the right size when using a high DPI scale factor (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.6 and beyond)

Fixed various system tray items’ context menus popping up in the wrong location (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.18.6 and beyond)

When using a wallpaper package with multiple sizes (e.g. the default Plasma wallpaper), the correct size is now displayed when using a high DPI scale factor or changing screen resolutions (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.3)

The plasma start-up sound is no longer cut off when starting up the computer (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.3)

The new System Monitor widgets now always have the correct text color when using a Plasma theme with a different color scheme from the Application color scheme (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.19.3)

System Settings no longer crashes when you open the Applications page without any file managers installed (Alex Merry, Plasma 5.19.3)

Krunner is now faster to open so the text that you type winds up in KRunner rather than in the app below it (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

When changing the default browser, the “default browser” entry visible in Kickoff and the Task Manager by default now automatically updates too (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

Dolphin can once again execute script files with spaces in the filename or path (David Faure, Frameworks 5.72)

Close buttons in Kirigami sheets are no longer subtly pixelated some of the time (Nicolas Fella, Kirigami 5.72)

Several Breeze icons which had subtle pixel mis-alignments that could make them appear blurry no longer suffer from this issue (Maksym Hazevych, Frameworks 5.72)

When using Qt scaling in Plasma by setting the PLASMA_USE_QT_SCALING=1 environment variable, windows now minimize to the correct locations in the Task Manager (Marco Martin, Frameworks 5.72)

User Interface Improvements

The System Settings Screen Locking page has been rewritten in QML, which fixes all of the open bugs (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20):

The Keyboard Layout System Tray item now always uses a monochrome icon, to better match the style (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.20):

How You Can Help

Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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 bugfixing and polish continue this week, but we also managed to squeeze in some welcome UI improvements, particular for our Kate text editor!

New Features

File move and copy operations and other similar I/O related jobs now support nanosecond timestamp precision (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.72)

File copy operations throughout KDE software can now make use of the copy-on-write functionality of the Btrfs filesystem (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.72)

Bugfixes & performance Improvements

.Desktop files whose icons are defined to be SVG files with the full path included now render correctly in Dolphin (Alexander Lohnau, Dolphin 20.04.3)

Hitting Ctrl+Shift+W in Yakuake now closes the session as expected rather than displaying an unpleasant “Ambiguous Shortcut Detected” dialog (Nicolas Fella, Yakuake 20.04.3)

Fixed a case where Discover could hang on launch and then crash (Aleix Pol Gonzales, Plasma 5.12.10 and beyond)

Fixed a bug that could cause Plasma Panels to be incorrectly drawn on top of full-screen game windows (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.18.6 and beyond)

When an application exits very soon after inhibiting screen locking, the inhibition is now correctly cleared (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.6 and beyond)

Fixed a bug that could cause the system to log out instead of restarting or shutting down (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.2)

Fixed a crash on Wayland when dragging-and-dropping a URL from Telegram to Firefox (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.2)

Switching between KWin rendering backends now lets you return to the original one without having to navigate elsewhere and then return (Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.19.2)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: The logout action in the Lock/Logout widget now works again (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.3)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: window rules using the WM_CLASS property now work again (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.19.3)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: window rules created from the rule dialog accessible by right-clicking on a window’s titleabar are now saved and applied properly (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.19.3)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: deleting multiple applications’ shortcuts in the new Global Shortcuts page no longer either fails or causes System Settings to crash (David Redondo, Plasma 5.19.3)

That incredibly annoying bug whereby scrolling with a scroll wheel mouse in a GTK app stops working when a Plasma notification appears has just been fixed!!! (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.19.3)

The System Settings Default Applications page now lists Nautilus as a filemanager when it’s installed (Méven Car, Plasma 5.19.3)

Setting detailed locale format settings now works properly (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.19.3)

The Media Player widget now has a saner default size when not in the System Tray (Riccardo Robecchi, Plasma 5.19.3)

Fixed a bug that could cause re-colorable icons to be re-colored incorrectly when changing an application-specific color scheme (David Redondo, Frameworks 5.72)

Plasma no longer crashes when configuring a WPA2-Enterprise encrypted Wi-Fi network with an EAP-TLS with public key only CA certificate file (Albert Astals Cid, QCA 2.3.1)

User Interface Improvements

Yakuake’s window can now be de-maximized with the same keyboard shortcut used to maximize it if you hit it a second time (Anton Karmanov, Yakuake 20.04.3)

Kate’s tab bar is now visually consistent with all the tab bars in other KDE apps (Tomaz Canabrava, Kate 20.08.0):

Kate’s tab bar now opens new tabs on the right, like most other tabs bars do (Christoph Cullmann, Kate 20.08.0)

Plasma’s Emoji picker window(which you can open with the Meta+period keyboard shortcut) now closes when you hit the escape key (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

That same Emoji picker window now lets you copy emojis using the standard Ctrl+C shortcut (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

When the user has applied updates that require a reboot, the System Tray icon becomes a “Restart” icon and prompts you to restart when you click on it (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

The System Tray’s expanded view now displays a button you can click on to configure the System Tray itself (me: Nate Graham):

The file dialog now behaves the same as Dolphin in that when you navigate to the parent folder, the child folder is highlighted (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.72)

When you user trash a file, empty the trash, then undo the deletion, the message shown is now more accurate (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.72)

How You Can Help

Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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 we plunged into fixing issues in Plasma 5.19 that slipped through QA as well as some older ones–a truly enormous number in all! We are taking to heart your pleas to focus on stability and polish. But of course we also worked on some new features too, because we can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time!

New Features

Spectacle’s timer feature and Shift+Printscreen (take full screen screenshot) and Meta+Shift+Printscreen (take rectangular region screenshot) shortcuts now work on Wayland (Méven Car, Plasma 5.20 and Spectacle 20.08.0)

Yakuake now shows a system tray item when running (which is optionally hide-able of course), so it’s easier to tell that it’s running and so that there’s a graphical way to summon (Maximillian Schiller, Yakuake 20.08.0)

It’s now possible to perform searches in a new private/incognito window using KRunner’s web shortcuts (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

KRunner’s web shortcuts runner now includes a module for searching the Arch wiki; search for “arch: foobar” in KRunner to try it out! (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.72)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Okular’s form-filling feature now works more reliably for certain forms using JavaScript (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 1.10.3)

Apps removed from the favorites list shared across Kickoff, Kicker, and Application Dashboard now always stay removed after you reboot (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.18.7)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: the Battery & Brightness applet now appears in the system tray again (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.1)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: The System Tray battery icon is no longer vertically mis-aligned when not showing the battery percentage (Michail Vourlakos, Plasma 5.19.1)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: System Tray icons set to “always show” are now always shown (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.19.1)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: resolved various display issues with the new Hard Disk monitor (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.19.1)

The Kicker Application Menu no longer suffers from a visual glitch whereby the search results list is too small when there are a lot of favorite items (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.19.1)

Copying system information to the clipboard no longer includes trailing spaces and newlines (Claudius Ellsel, Plasma 5.19.1)

System Settings no longer crashes when you visit the Thunderbolt page and then switch to another page (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.1)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: the Screen Edges effects now works again (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.19.2)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: the “Configure Window Manager” menu item from the titlebar context menu now works again (Méven Car, Plasma 5.19.2)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: WiFi network names in the Networks applet no longer interpret HTML, preventing maliciously-crafted network names from doing potentially nefarious things (me: Nate Graham, 5.19.2

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: the Global Menu applet once again updates itself correctly when the current application changes (Carson Black, Plasma 5.19.2)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: KRunner’s window is once again positioned correctly when using a high DPI screen and the PLASMA_USE_QT_SCALING=1 environment variable (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.2)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: there is no longer a faint blue outline around the circular timeout indicator for notification pop-ups (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.19.2)

Interacting with the media controls on the lock screen will now pause the timer that determines when the UI fades out (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.2)

Copying system information to the clipboard in English now actually uses English for everything (Claudius Ellsel, Plasma 5.19.2)

The search feature in the new System Monitor configuration pages now works (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.2)

Picture of The Day wallpapers now work on the lock screen (Yunhe Guo, Plasma 5.20)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: Placeholder messages in Plasma applets now respect the Plasma style and color scheme (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20, though I have asked distros to backport it to 5.19)

Fix Plasma 5.19 regression: After entering the password for a Wi-Fi network in the networks applet, you’re no longer pointlessly asked for the same password again in a dialog box (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20, though I have asked distros to backport it to 5.19)

The Plasma panel no longer appears on top of full screen apps and views when on Wayland (somebody awesome, Plasma 5.20)

The trash now automatically purges its records for files that are deleted by hand, preventing a situation where the whole system would freeze because it was trying in vain to collect information about files that no longer existed (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.72)

Monochrome icons in QML-based software are no longer often subtly blurry (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.72)

Clicking on the scrollbar in certain scrollable Kirigami sheets no longer unexpectedly closes the sheet (Ismael Asensio, Frameworks 5.72)

Setting a default web shortcut now works (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.72)

The legal notice in KHelpCenter is now readable no matter what color scheme you’re using (Yuri Chornoivan, Frameworks 5.72)

Fixed a graphical glitch that could cause notification pop-ups’ timeout indicators to be drawn as a black square on old graphics hardware (Yaroslav Sidlovsky, Frameworks 5.72)

User Interface Improvements

Dolphin now displays remote shares and FUSE mounts with their user-friendly display name rather than the full path (Méven Car, Dolphin 20.08.0)

The new System Monitor widgets now have more sane default sizes (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.19.2)

System Tray items now respect Fitts’ Law; you can activate on the nearest applet when clicking on the pixel adjacent to the screen edge, making the click target effectively infinite in that direction (Michail Vourlakos, Plasma 5.20)

The Plasma audio applet and System Settings page now filter out unused audio devices by default to avoid cluttering up the view. You can however still show them if you’d like (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

Discover now shows you when an application listed in the search or browse list comes from a different source than your default source (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.20):

The layout of the Digital Clock widget’s calendar pop-up has been refined and streamlined in response to user feedback (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

Shadows for pop-ups in GTK3 apps using the Breeze-GTK theme now better match the shadows in Qt-based apps (Somebody going by the pseudonym “Toluschr,” Plasma 5.20)

The Web Shortcuts window now has a sane default size when opened from the System Settings Krunner page (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

The “Switch Application Language.. “menu item has been relocated from the Help menu to the Settings menu and renamed to “Configure Language…” to match the style of other items in that menu (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.72):

How You Can Help

Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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.

In addition to a ton of bugfixes for Plasma 5.19 which we just released, this week we started to land big improvements for Plasma 5.20. Take a look:

New Features

It’s now possible to independently configure the file size cut-off for displaying previews for local and remote files in Dolphin (Gastón Haro, Dolphin 20.08.0):

It’s now possible to tile a window to a corner by quickly invoking two edge tiling shortcuts within one second; for example by hitting Meta+Right arrow and Meta+up arrow one after another, the window will be tiled to the top-right corner (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

You can now middle-click on the System Tray Notifications icon to enter and exit Do Not Disturb mode (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.20)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

The drawing tools in Okular’s presentation mode toolbar are no longer blurry when using a high DPI screen (David Hurka, Okular 1.10.3)

Yakuake’s main window no longer appears under a top panel on Wayland (Tranter Madi, Yakuake 20.08.0)

Fixed a bug that could prevent Yakuake from opening when using a dual-monitor setup with a single vertical panel on a screen edge close to the center of the full desktop (Maximillian Schiller, Yakuake 20.08.0)

Kate’s “Open Recent” menu now displays documents opened in Kate from the command line and other sources as well, not just the ones opened using the file dialog (Christoph Cullmann, Kate 20.08.0)

Fixed a common crash in Qt applications when quitting (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.19.0)

Disconnected Wi-Fi networks now display the correct security type (Jan Grulich, Plasma 5.19.1

The Bluetooth system tray applet’s tooltip no longer shows the name of the wrong device (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.1)

Fixed a bug causing high CPU usage when scrolling through the list of rules in the new Window Rules System Settings page (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.19.1)

Rows in the System Tray popup are now centered vertically in a correct manner (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.19.1)

Right-clicking on pinned apps to run their app-specific options (e.g. to open a private browsing window in Firefox or Chrome) now works properly when the action includes command-line arguments (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.19.1)

When you search for an application in the Kickoff Application Launcher and then right-click on the search result, the “Edit Application…” menu item now works (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.19.1)

Various apps whose .desktop files specify the icon as a full path to an SVG file now display those icons correctly in the Kicker, Kickoff, and Application Dashboard launchers (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.19.1)

The activities database now has backup and self-repair mechanisms, which should reduce (if not eliminate) the occurrences of favorites and recent items being corrupted or forgotten (Ivan Čukić, Plasma 5.20.0)

Recent documents accessed in private Activities are no longer visible in KRunner search results accessed from other Activities (Méven Car, Plasma 5.20.0)

Fixed an issue preventing the new header appearance from working properly when using the Breeze Dark plasma theme (Chris Holland, Frameworks 5.71)

Content can no longer overflow in the grid items in the new “Get New [thing]” windows (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.72)

When using a dark color scheme, the new “Get new [thing]” windows no longer display white squares in the center of each grid item before the preview image loads (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.72)

The Baloo file indexer no longer skips indexing the filenames of files with a blacklisted MIME type (i.e. those whose contents are not useful to index); it will now always index filenames, but only perform full content indexing for files whose content makes sense to index. This should make it better overall at finding files but use hardly any more resources in the process (Stefan Brüns, Frameworks 5.72)

User Interface Improvements

The default Plasma layout has been changed to replace the Task manager with an Icons-Only Task manager with some apps pinned to it by default, on a thickened panel. This should provide a more familiar and modern layout with greater touch-friendliness by default. Remember that you can always change back if you don’t like it 🙂 (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

The panel’s thickness is now easier to adjust: you can use a spinbox to enter a numerical size or fine-tune the side with plus and minus buttons, and you can still drag on it to adjust the size in a very coarse way, as before (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

The System Tray’s expanded view of hidden items now uses a grid instead of a list, which makes it much more touch friendly and fixes a few bugs (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20.0):

Task switchers now have shadows on Wayland, as expected (Vlad Zahorodnii, Frameworks 5.72)

How You Can Help

Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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.