Plasma 5.20 is going to be one absolutely massive release! It already was but this week we added even more to it: more features, more fixes for longstanding bugs, more improvements to the user interface! Read on for details:

New Features

Plasma now warns you when your hard disk or SSD is about to die, and lets you monitor its health in the Info Center app (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.20)

When using the Breeze GTK theme, GTK headerbar apps now use the same appearance for your window titlebar buttons as other apps (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.20)

KRunner can now be configured to be a free-floating window, rather than glued to the top of the screen (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

It’s now possible to uninstall user-installed KWin scripts straight from the System Settings KWin Scripts page (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

Those of you who became accustomed to the behavior of the macOS Dock can now optionally configure your Icons-Only task managers to not minimize the active task when clicked (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

Those of you who were worried about the new “KDE apps remember their window positions” feature being disruptive can now disable it (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Gwenview’s “Sort By” button now works properly and matches the behavior and appearance of Dolphin’s (me: Nate Graham, Gwenview 20.08.1)

Partition Manager no longer fails to create a single EXT4 partition on an unformatted SD card (Adriaan de Groot, KDE Partition Manager 4.2.0)

Ark now uses much less memory while extracting files (Alexey Ivanov, Ark 20.12.0)

Dolphin now detects your computer’s exported Samba shares no matter how you launch it (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.12.0)

Discover no longer incorrectly lists as installed things that you installed from a Get New [Thing] window in System Settings but then subsequently deleted in System Settings rather than the Get New [Thing] window (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

Global shortcuts to launch 3rd-party apps now work again (sorry this took so long) Méven Car, Frameworks 5.74)

Fixed a case where Discover could crash while performing updates that include Get New [Thing] content (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.74)

Fixed a case where Dolphin could crash while sharing files using Bluetooth (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.74)

Add-ons installed using the Get New [thing] dialogs now install properly if they have slashes in their titles (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.74)

The highlight effect for hovered files and folders in the URL navigators throughout various KDE apps is no longer too wide (Ismael Asensio, Frameworks 5.74)

User Interface Improvements

When creating a Samba share, the dialog now automatically disables the option to turn on guest access if the system’s Samba configuration is set up to prohibit it, rather than letting you try anyway and failing silently, and also checks for the condition where your user isn’t in the correct group (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.12.0)

Spectacle no longer copies the file path of the newly-saved screenshot to the clipboard by default (Claudius Ellsel, Spectacle 20.12.0)

Elisa’s “Now Playing view” now has adequate internal side margins and wraps long song titles rather than eliding (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 20.12.0)

Arrows in table view headers now point the direction you expect: down when the biggest items are on top, and up when the biggest items are on the bottom (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

Discover’s “Addons” and “Packages to remove” sheets have received visual and usability overhauls (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

The System Settings Shortcuts page now permits keyboard navigation (Carl Schwan, Plasma 5.20)

Kirigami Sheets now use more appropriate and visually pleasing colors for their headers and footers (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.74)

KDE apps’ window sizes are now remembered on a per-screen-arrangement basis, just like their positions now are (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.74)

Godot engine files now have nice icons (Michael Alexsander, Frameworks 5.74)

Keepassxc once again has pretty Breeze theme icons (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 I implemented a much-requested feature: KDE apps now remember their main window positions when closed and re-launched! They even remember their positions (and soon their sizes too) on a per-screen-arrangement basis.

However, there are two important caveats here:

1. Right now this only affects QWidgets-based KDE apps, and only their main windows.
2. This feature only works on X11.

These limitations will be improved upon over time. On X11, QML-based apps and auxiliary non-dialog windows in QWidgets-based apps will get ported to use it over time. And on Wayland, an even better implementation is in progress that remembers positions for all windows at the window manager level–KDE and non-KDE apps alike! That’s some good stuff. The X11-only version that I already landed will show up in Frameworks 5.74, while the work-in-progress Wayland version will land in a Plasma release once it’s finished. Likely Plasma 5.21, but maybe 5.20 if we’re really lucky. 🙂

But wait, there’s more…

Other New Features

When you try to create a Samba share but there is no appropriate Samba user configured, you’re now warned of this and prompted to fix it, rather than share creation just failing silently (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.12.0)

Implemented the Wayland input-method-unstable-v1 protocol, which opens the door for proper virtual keyboard support on Plasma Mobile, among other benefits! (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.20)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Clicking on the title of the currently-playing song in Elisa once again takes you to the “Now Playing” view (Stef Lep, Elisa 20.12.0)

Fixed a bug that could cause KDE apps to fail to launch under certain circumstances (Harald Sitter, Frameworks 5.74)

Fixed a crash in System Settings when installing new items using a “Get New [Thing]” dialog (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.74)

Lyrics metadata for audio files encoded over 20 years ago on a pre-OS-X mac OS version are now displayed correctly throughout KDE software making use of the KFileMetadata framework, such as Dolphin and Elisa (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.74)

Fixed a crash in KRunner when there is no Firefox profile (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.20)

User Interface Improvements

Kamoso’s folder picker dialog no longer has blurry pixelated icons when using a fractional scale factor (Matej Mrenica, Kamoso 20.08.1)

The Samba Sharing dialog now displays a warning if you try to configure a share such a way that it would be mostly broken (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.12.0)

The Device Notifier applet now displays a combobox in the main UI that lets you choose what it displays: only removable devices, only non-removable devices, or all devices (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

Discover’s “Add Source” dialog now opens with the text field focused by default (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

When switching virtual desktops using the Desktop cube Effect, any windows pinned to all desktops now float above the cube by default (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

The options available for desktop icons sizes now follow a more regular progression; there’s no longer such a big difference between the two biggest sizes, nor such a small difference between the two smallest sizes (me: Nate Graham and Manuel Jesús de la Fuente, Plasma 5.20)

Discover’s “Task Progress” sheet now closes automatically if it’s still open when the last task completes (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20)

There is no longer an unnecessary horizontal scrollbar in Okular’s settings window or the Power Management settings window (David Hurka, Frameworks 5.74)

The Global Menu applet’s menus now have adequate visual padding (Noah Davis, 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 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.