Welcome to a new issue of “This Week in Plasma”! Every week we cover the highlights of what's happening in the world of KDE Plasma and its associated apps like Discover, System Monitor, and more.
This week many KDE contributors gathered in the devastatingly sensible Austrian city of Graz for a long-awaited Plasma development sprint. This was both a “planning sprint” and a “working sprint,” so quite a lot of great work got done there, including some major features. And of course those not in attendance were still busy too! Check out all the good news:
Notable new Features
Plasma 6.4.0
Newly-installed applications are now visually highlighted in the Kickoff application launcher! (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
The accessibility feature to use numberpad buttons to move the pointer now works on Wayland! (Nicolas Fella, link)
Implemented Wayland support for “relative mode” when using a drawing tablet stylus, which allows it to behave more like a mouse you hold like a pencil. (Nicolas Fella, link)
When your microphone is muted and an application tries to use it, Plasma will now display an OSD reminding you that it's muted, so you don't confusingly wonder why no one can hear you. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
KMenuEdit now lets you configure apps to always run on the system's discrete GPU, just like the old properties-dialog-based UI for this did. (Oliver Beard, link)
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.4.0
System Settings now has a new “Animations” page that allows easy configuration of the various animated movement effects throughout the system, and these are no longer shown in on Desktop Effects page. (Oliver Beard, link 1, link 2, link 3, and link 4)
The current Desktop Effects page still contains various functional effects that are more than just animated transitions between states, but expect for more and more of them to be progressively removed from that page over time as we find better places for them.
You can now switch tabs/sources in the Media Controller widget with the Ctrl+Tab and Alt+[number] shortcuts. (Christoph Wolk, link)
When finalizing a screen recording in Spectacle is taking a long time for some reason, it now notifies you about this instead of just hanging until completed. (Arjen Hiemstra and Noah Davis, link 1, link 2, and link 3)
How notifications interact with full screen applications has been improved. Previously non-critical notifications were simply suppressed while any full-screen apps were open; now, instead, Do Not Disturb mode is automatically enabled while a full-screen app is focused. This allows re-using existing behaviors around Do Not Disturb mode, including the “you missed some notifications” message. And this behavior can be disabled if desired. (Kristen McWilliam, link)
The very nice Weather Report widget is now, by default, shown in an un-configured state in the System Tray, inviting you to set it up! This reveals it in a more obvious way, so more people find out about it. Of course, if you don't want to see a weather report, you're welcome to disable it. (Nate Graham, link)
In the panel configuration dialog, the two upper toolbar buttons have been combined into a menu so that the dialog doesn't become absurdly wide in languages like German. (Nate Graham, link)
Deleting a logged-in user now shows an appropriate warning dialog, and no longer lets you try to futilely delete their files while they're still logged in. (Nate Graham, link)
You're now also shown a warning if you try to disable the system's clipboard functionality. (Nate Graham, link)
In the Digital Clock widget's calendar popup, the dots signifying the number of events on each day are now located above the day numerals so they don't overlap with other UI elements also present, such as alternate calendar labels. Additionally, their color more closely reflects the color of the event they symbolize. (Tobias Fella, link 1 and link 2)
Did some modernization of the config dialogs for the Digital Clock, Dictionary, Timer, and Media Frame widgets. (Christoph Wolk and Tobias Fella, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5)
There's still more consistency work to do here, as the above screenshots will indicate. But we're on the case, working on bringing these old widgets up to par for modern times!
The Configure and Pin buttons in the Digital Clock widget's popup are no longer so crunched together. (Tobias Fella, link)
After closing the Kickoff Application Launcher while viewing search results or the Places tab, opening it again no longer briefly shows a weird sliding animation for the contents. (Jin Liu, link)
Rephrased Discover's “reboot to finish this offline update” message so it isn't so pushy about rebooting immediately. (Nate Graham, link)
Discover now respects your globally-configured web search provider rather than always using DuckDuckGo. (Nate Graham, link)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma 6.3.5
Fixed a case where KWin could crash when disconnecting a laptop from certain docking stations. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed a semi-common yet random-seeming crash in Discover. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, link)
Fixed a bug that could cause the relevant numbers in a newly-created Weather widget to show the wrong values until restarting. (Ismael Asensio, link)
Fixed a case where tooltip text in Plasma could be unreadable when using certain non-default color schemes. (Bogdan Cvetanovski Pašalić, link)
Fixed a case with Discover's “Still looking…” message could be displayed un-centered. (Nate Graham, link)
Plasma 6.4.0
Fixed the size of the Meta+V clipboard popup in mixed-DPI multi-monitor setups on Wayland too. (Fushan Wen, link)
Fixed a bug that caused the Global Menu widget to sometimes display menus from the wrong app. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Navigating away from the desktop shortcuts configuration page after reverting changes manually no longer inappropriately prompts you to save or discard changes that don't exist. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Clicking on a Trash widget in a panel or System Tray to open Dolphin showing the trash now focuses the Dolphin window if it was already open. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Frameworks 6.14
Fixed a remaining issue in the common Kirigami.ScrollablePage component that could make pages in Discover unnecessarily horizontally scrollable. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, link)
The common Kirigami.Separator item no longer flickers between 1px thick and 2px thick when moving or resizing a window while using fractional scale factor. (David Edmundson, link)
Other bug information of note:
- 1 very high priority Plasma bug (same as last week). Current list of bugs
- 19 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 21 last week). Current list of bugs
Notable in Performance & Technical
Plasma 6.3.5
Fixed an issue that would cause KWin to schedule constant screen repaints while the screen was dimmed, wasting resources and power. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Plasma 6.4.0
KWin has switched to using the stable version of the ext-data-control protocol. (Neal Gompa, link)
How You Can Help
KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.
You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine!
You don’t have to be a programmer, either. Many other opportunities exist:
- Triage and confirm bug reports, maybe even identify their root cause
- Contribute designs for wallpapers, icons, and app interfaces
- Design and maintain websites
- Translate user interface text items into your own language
- Promote KDE in your local community
- …And a ton more things!
You can also help us by making a donation! Any monetary contribution — however small — will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.
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