Hold on to your hats, folks, because this week’s Usability & Productivity report is OVERFLOWING WITH AWESOMENESS! Let’s jump right in:

New Features

• The Plasma notifications system has been rewritten from the ground up, and now supports Do Not Disturb mode, persistent notifications, more intelligent history with grouping, critical notifications in fullscreen apps, improved notifications for file transfer jobs, better multi-monitor behavior, a much more usable System Settings page to configure everything, and more. Check out the commit, it’s truly epic! For even more information, see Kai’s blog post on the subject. (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
  
  
  
  
• Added support for one-time passwords for OpenConnect VPNs (Enrique Melendez, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Dolphin and the Places panel in various apps and the open/save dialogs now display FUSE-mounted filesystems, including Plasma vaults (Stefan Brüns, KDE Frameworks 5.58):
  
• KTextEditor-based apps like Kate and KDevelop now have a radically better and more usable menu to choose syntax highlighting style which includes a built-in search (Nibaldo Gonzalez, KDE Frameworks 5.59):
  
• Spectacle’s Rectangular Region mode now works on Wayland! (Boudhayan Gupta, KDE Applications 19.08.0)
• Okular’s Line annotation can now have various visual flourishes added to the ends, allowing them to be turned into arrows and more! (Rajeesh K Nambiar, KDE Applications 19.08.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• When muting all audio using a keyboard’s mute button, now the volume level notification sound is never played (Nicolas Fella, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• On X11, GTK headerbar windows now correctly change their titlebar color when inactive (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• The KWin window manager no longer crashes when a script removes the current virtual desktop (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• The “Connection Activated” notification no longer appears in the notification history, so as to avoid cluttering it up with un-actionable items (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Horizontal scrollbars in Kirigami and QML-based apps now have a more accurate scroll handle width (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Frameworks 5.59):
  
• When Spectacle is configured to use a quality setting of greater than 89 for lossy image formats like JPEG, PNG images are no longer erroneously affected and are once again saved with reasonable file sizes (David Redondo, KDE Applications 19.04.1)
• When Spectacle is configured to save in a file format other than PNG, dragging the image from the main window to somewhere else now passes the other application an image in the appropriate alternative file type (me: Nate graham, KDE Applications 19.04.1)

User Interface Improvements

• When saving a file and there’s a file type chooser, its label now says “File type:” rather than “Filter:” (me, Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.59)

Next week, your name could be in this list! Not sure how? Just ask! I’ve helped mentor a number of new contributors recently and I’d love to help you, too! You can also check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

If you find KDE software useful, consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Howdy folks! Here’s a reminder about our Plasma 5.16 wallpaper competition. We’ve gotten lots of wallpapers, but there’s a little more than two weeks left and still plenty of time to submit you gorgeous entries! As a reminder, the winner also receives a Slimbook One computer! Here are the rules.

Let me also take the opportunity to clarify what it is that we’re looking for, overall. We want wallpapers with the following characteristics:

• More abstract than literal
• Uses the Breeze color palette, at least a bit
• Has some geometric elements to it
• Attractive but not overwhelming
• Soothing but not boring
• Creative but not bizarre or disturbing
• Still good-looking with some desktop icons on top of it

Here are some stylistic suggestions, too: Avoid having a central foreground element framed within a background. This feels very confining. Try having the foreground go out of the frame and appear off-center. Also, try to avoid large areas of super bright colors, as these can be visually overwhelming and look uncomfortable when closing or minimizing windows. Pastels often work better than bright neon colors.

and if you’re looking for inspiration, check out the last six wallpapers. See how they evolved over time?

So get out there and submit a wallpaper!

It’s time for your weekly dose of KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative!

But first, I want to draw everyone’s attention to our Plasma 5.16 wallpaper competition. In addition to getting their wallpaper used as the default background for millions of users of KDE Plasma 5.16, the winner also receives a Slimbook One computer! So what are you waiting for!? Go and submit an awesome wallpaper! Here are the rules. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out the last six wallpapers:

Anyway, here’s the Usability & Productivity work:

New Features

• The System Tray now shows a microphone icon to notify you when some app is using the microphone (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• The Skanlite scanning app received High DPI support (Alexander Volkov, Skanlite 2.2)
• You can now easily switch all playing audio streams to a different device (Valerio Pilo, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Discover and the Get New [thing] dialogs now show a placeholder image instead of a big ugly blank white square for items that have no screenshots (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, fixed right now on the server)
• The Baloo file indexing service no longer crashes while trying to index malformed JPEG files or .spx files containing GIS data (Alexander Stippich and Stefan Brüns, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• Symlinks to programs with no icons of their own now have a default icon (Harald Sitter, KDE Frameworks 5.58):
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause wireless networks to disappear from the network list after a failed connection (Oleg Solovyov, KDE Plasma 5.15.5)
• The KWin window manager now correctly displays emojis in window titlebars (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.15.5):
  
• Discover no longer tries to translate keyboard shortcuts (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Discover now correctly lists all available Flatpak runtime updates on the Updates page (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• KInfoCenter now shows the correct amount of memory on 32-bit systems (Christoph Feck, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Fixed an issue on Wayland that could cause blur in menus to become un-blurred the second time the menu is opened (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• The KWin window manager no longer crashes when compositing is turned off and the current window is closed while selected in the alt-tab interface (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Assigning tags to files on the desktop no longer results in the creation of new tags with the wrong name (Stefan Brüns, KDE Applications 19.04.1)
• Invitation emails in KMail are no longer deleted after replying to them (Allen Winter, KDE Applications 19.08.0)

User Interface Improvements

• It’s now possible to switch between normal input move and vi input mode using the status bar in Kate and other KTextEditor-based apps, like KDevelop (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.58):
  
• It’s now possible to quickly switch the “Show Desktop” widget for “Minimize all” (if you prefer that behavior instead), by right-clicking on it and clicking “Alternatives” (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• The Virtual Desktop/Activity pager’s label is now more legible when a Virtual Desktop or Activity has a lot of open windows (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• The Plasma network configuration window no longer lets you try to enter a password that cannot possibly be correct for the given network connection–such as a password for a WPA-PSK protected wifi network with less than 8 characters (Oleg Solovyov, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• When searching for the “Log Out” command using the Kickoff Application Launcher’s built-in search feature, it’s now the top entry (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Refined the System Settings Window Decorations page’s drag-and-drop user interface (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• On Plasma widgets’ “Keyboard Shortcuts” settings page, the “remove shortcut” button is now the same height as the “assign shortcut” button, and the explanatory text is simpler and clearer (Filip Fila and me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.58 and KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  

Next week, your name could be in this list! Not sure how? Just ask! I’ve helped mentor a number of new contributors recently and I’d love to help you, too! You can also check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

If you find KDE software useful, consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Welcome to week 68 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative! Like many others, this one is full of nice little quality-of-life fixes that should make your experience of using KDE software nicer. Have a look-see:

New Features

• The Task Manager can now be configured to move a window on a different virtual desktop to the current one when middle-clicked (Thomas, Surrel, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Okular now has a feature to select all text on the current page (Shubham, KDE Applications 19.08.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Scrollviews in apps using the Kirigami toolkit (such as System Settings and Discover) now have correct scroll behavior regardless of whether you’re using a mouse wheel, touchpad, or touchscreen (Marco Martin, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• Text Fields in QML-based apps now display the correct I-beam cursor when hovered over (David Edmundson, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• Fixed a common crash with the KGlobalAccel framework (Fabian Vogt, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• When using a high DPI scale factor and multiple displays, the scaling no longer gets reset to 1x when a screen is disconnected (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• The Task Manager no longer eventually eats up all available file descriptors when running on X11, windows get grouped, and thumbnails are displayed (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• It’s now possible to use a login screen background image with non-ASCII characters in the filename or full file path (David Edmundson, KDE Frameworks 5.58)

User Interface Improvements

• A prettier icon is now used for the default user avatar (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• When Konsole is used to save terminal output to a file, the save dialog now remembers and recalls the last-used save location (Tao Guo and Kurt Hindenburg, KDE Applications 19.08.0)
• Dolphin’s Information Panel is now configured inline, without a separate dialog window (Stefan Brüns, KDE Applications 19.08.0):
  
• Screenshots in the “Get new [thing]” dialogs no longer have an ugly pixellated shadow (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• The “Show Desktop” widget is now present in the panel by default for new installations (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  

Next week, your name could be in this list! Not sure how? Just ask! I’ve helped mentor a number of new contributors recently and I’d love to help you, too! You can also check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

If you find KDE software useful, consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

If you’re celebrating Easter, we’ve got a gift for you: week 67 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative! And if not… well you get it anyway!

New Features

• The KWin window manager now has initial support for using the proprietary NVIDIA driver in a Wayland session (Erik Kurzinger, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• System Settings pages written in QML that are opened standalone now have the correct window height by default. This fixes the Fonts, Workspace Behavior, Mouse, Touchpad, and Launch Feedback pages (Marco Martin, KDE Frameworks 5.58):
  
• Fixed a common Plasma crash (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Kate and other tabbed editors using the KTextEditor framework no longer display the dreaded “ambiguous shortcut” warning dialog when switching tabs with the ctrl+page up/page down keyboard shortcuts because the “move insertion point to top/bottom of viewport” shortcuts have been changed to be alt+home/end (Cnristoph Cullman, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• Fuel consumption conversion in KRunner now produces the correct results (Michal Malý, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• Fixed a regression in dolphin that was preventing the “Create New” button from being added to the toolbar (me: Nate Graham, and Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 19.04.1)
• Mobile phones plugged into your computer no longer show two identical “Open with File Manager” items in the Device Notifier (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.08.0):
  

User Interface Improvements

• It’s now possible to replace a widget with an alternative one when in panel edit mode (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• Discover now lets you force-quit it if you try to quit while it’s doing stuff–of course, it’s up to you to live with the consequences! (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• The Login Screen (SDDM) System Settings page got a visual overhaul (Filip Fila, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• It’s no longer necessary to check the “Force Rasterization” checkbox in Okular’s print settings to enable the page scaling options (Michael Weghorn, KDE Applications 19.08.0)

Next week, your name could be in this list! Not sure how? Just ask! I’ve helped mentor a number of new contributors recently and I’d love to help you, too! You can also check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

If you find KDE software useful, consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Here’s week 66 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative, and some major features have landed! Check it out:

New Features

• The label width/grid size for files and folders on the desktop is now user-configurable, allowing small icons to have small labels if that’s what suits you (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• Dolphin and other KDE apps now have the ability to display file creation dates on Linux when using version 2.28 or later of the glibc library (Méven Car, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• It’s now possible to open Kate with the insertion point at a user-specified position, using syntax like kate file://foo.txt?line=123&column=456 (Gleb Popov, KDE Applications 19.04.0 with KDE Frameworks 5.58)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Fixed a bug that could cause the Baloo file indexer to never stop indexing when configured to exclude a particular folder but include a sub-folder inside of it (Stefan Brüns, KDE Frameworks 5.57)
• Desktop item labels are now always sharp and crisp (Fabian Vogt and me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.12.9):
  
• For Plasma 5.12.x and 5.15.5, the minimum width of desktop items is now a little bit smaller and more reasonable (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.12.9):
  
• The System Monitor widgets’ configuration pages now accurately display the actual status of what’s visible/checked and what’s not (Pavel Mars, KDE Plasma 5.15.5)
• The button to mute notification sounds now works anytime, rather than only after you’ve adjusted the volume slider at least once (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.15.5)
• When using the proprietary NVIDIA driver and Qt 5.13, graphics are no longer often distorted after waking the computer from sleep (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Improved support for changing the brightness on DDC-compatible displays (Dorian Vogel, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• When using KDE applications outside of Plasma, file transfers are now displayed in a standalone window (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• When Krusader is installed, using the krarc:/ URL to access compressed files now allows you to use the URL navigator to go back to paths outside of the compressed file (Natsumi Higa, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• Dolphin no longer crashes when tagging multiple files at once (Nicolas Fella, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

User Interface Improvements

• When a document open in Kate or any other app using the KTextEditor framework (like KDevelop) is deleted on disk, the message widget alerting you to this fact now has a button allowing you to close it (Méven Car, KDE Frameworks 5.58):
  
• Improved auto-bracket support in Kate and other apps using the KTextEditor framework (Loh Tar, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• In Kate and other apps using the KTextEditor framework, spaces are now correctly inserted when doing multi-line indentation in block selection mode (Loh Tar, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• The “Alternatives…” menu item for widgets now has a better icon and text (Bjorn Fëber and me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.58):
  
• On Wayland, the Plasma Vault window as well as other system-service-related windows now show the right icon (David Edmundson, KDE Frameworks 5.58.0)
• Kate and other apps using the KSyntaxHighlighting framework like KDevelop now do syntax highlighting for Fish shell scripts (Arnd Diestelhorst, KDE Frameworks 5.58)
• Dolphin no longer shows “Open With” menu items for empty directories (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.04.0)
• When navigating using the keyboard, Dolphin now automatically scrolls the view to ensure that selected items are visible (Tranter Madi, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

Finally I’d like to give a shout-out to KDE developer Matthieu Gallien, who is developing KDE’s next-generation music player Elisa, which is shaping up nicely. I’m close to using it as my daily driver. Give it a try via KDE’s nightly Flatpak builds, or compile it from source.

Next week, your name could be in this list! Not sure how? Just ask! I’ve helped mentor a number of new contributors recently and I’d love to help you, too! You can also check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

If you find KDE software useful, consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Here’s week 65 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative, and I’m happy to announce a long-anticipated improvement: High DPI support in Gwenview! Check it out:

New Features

• It’s now possible to deselect individual wallpapers so they aren’t included in the slideshow rotation (David Redondo, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• Okular now lets you expand and collapse all annotations at once (Joao Netto, KDE Applications 19.08.0)
• Gwenview now has support for High DPI screens, including with a fractional scale factor (Lukaz Hetznecker and Alexander Volkov, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  
• The Meta+E global launch shortcut for Dolphin that I mentioned a few weeks ago unfortunately got reverted for the Applications 19.04 release, but will be back in the 19.08 release, in a more technically correct form (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.08.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Fixed the dropdown menu in the Cuttlefish icon viewing app so that its dropdown menu is actually visible (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause desktop icons to show up in the wrong positions when switching between multiple activities while using more than one display (Oleg Solovyov, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Windows that have been marked as “keep above other windows” now correctly hide themselves when invoking the “Show Desktop” functionality (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• After downloading a new cursor theme, the current cursor theme now remains selected in the grid (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Okular now has improved performance when scrolling with a touchscreen or drawing tablet (Kezi Olio, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

User Interface Improvements

• The Meta+L shortcut can now be used by default to lock the screen (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• The wallpaper chooser’s user interface now has perfect horizontal and vertical alignment for the buttons and comboboxes of the Color and Slideshow wallpaper plugins (Filip Fila, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• List items in the Kickoff Application Launcher now have more compact side margins, which particularly looks good when using a panel on the side or top of the screen (Noah Davis, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• The “this file is executable” dialog now uses legible and comprehensible icons in the buttons (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.57):
  
• We have a fancy new icon for Sublime Merge (KDE Frameworks 5.57):
  
• When a document in Kate is changed on disk by another app, Kate now asks only once whether or not to reload it (Loh Tar, KDE Frameworks 5.57)
• Kate can now automatically reload an open document that’s changed on disk by another application, allowing it to be used as a log viewer if desired (Loh Tar, KDE Frameworks 5.57)

Next week, your name could be in this list! Not sure how? Just ask! I’ve helped mentor a number of new contributors recently and I’d love to help you, too! You can also check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

If you find KDE software useful, consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.