This Week in Plasma: inertial scrolling, RDP clipboard syncing, and more session restore
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 we not only continued polishing up Plasma 6.4 in response to feedback (thanks to everyone who submitted bug reports and wrote nice emails to us), but we also started work on bigger improvements to Plasma 6.5.
Probably the biggest one is the next piece of the Wayland session restore puzzle clicking into place: David Edmundson has implemented support for the xx-session-management-v1 Wayland session restore protocol in Qt 6.10! This means that software built on top of Qt 6.10 (for example, Plasma and KDE apps) will be able to start implementing the protocol themselves. Once they do, then finally real session restore will work on Wayland. We're not all the way there yet, but we keep on working to get closer all the time!
But that’s not it! We’ve got a whole lot more, too…
Notable New Features
Plasma 6.5.0
Plasma’s Welcome Center apps now teaches you about the many keyboard shortcuts in Plasma, as well as what the heck the “Meta” key is. (Nate Graham, link)
Plasma’s built-in RDP server now supports syncing clipboard text between the client and server. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.4.1
The “Highlight windows” effect has been turned off by default on the Task Manager widget, for accessibility reasons discussed in more detail a few days ago. (Nate Graham, link)
Refined the tone mapping feature in KWin to improve the look of some screen content when using HDR or EDR. (Xaver Hugl, link)
You can no longer open an infinite number of error messages in Spectacle’s UI by repeatedly doing a thing that triggers them, and then not stopping even though maybe you should. (Noah Davis, link)
Plasma 6.4.2
Spectacle no longer includes a ghostly semi-transparent version of its own menus in screenshots taken within the app when not using any kind of delay. (Ismael Asensio, link)
The “New!” badges applied to newly-installed apps shown in the Kickoff Application Launcher are now more appealing and easier to read by using semantically correct colors from the active color scheme. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link 1 and link 2)
In the Kicker Application Menu widget, you can now activate the power/session actions using the Enter key, in addition to the Space key. Now all the UI elements on that widget can be activated with Enter. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Made the Night Light feature’s color tinting look nicer on certain hardware. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
The notification telling you that you missed some notifications while you were in Do Not Disturb mode now includes a button you can click on to actually see those missed notifications! (Kristen McWilliam, link)
You can now copy the QR code for clipboard items, in addition to just being able to look at them and scan them. (Ismael Asensio, link)
The “Click here to change the icon” button that’s visible on the Properties window and other QtWidgets-based apps is now more obvious as to what its purpose is. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link 1 and link 2)
The Networks widget now tells you what what it’s doing for more more potential states that it can be in, including “looking for wireless networks” and “uh, I’ve been disabled, dude.” (Nate Graham, link)
System Settings’ Printers page also now gives you a better error message if its service has been disabled. (Mike Noe, link)
On System Settings’ Region & Language page, the error message that tells you language packages couldn’t be installed now actually mentions their names so you can try to troubleshoot it a bit. (Ismael Asensio, link)
Frameworks 6.16
All scrollable views in all QtQuick-based KDE software now have inertial scrolling when scrolled using a touchpad! Note: only with a touchpad, not with a mouse wheel. No inertia there. Say it with me: no inertia for mouse wheels! (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Improved the accessibility of the common Properties dialog in many ways. (Felix Ernst, link 1 and link 2)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma 6.3.6
Made the Environment Canada provider for Plasma’s Weather Report widget work again after they changed the data format. (Ismael Asensio, link)
Plasma 6.4.1
Fixed several crashes in in KDE’s desktop portal implementations. (David Redondo, link 1 and link 2)
If you have a Samsung Odyssey G5 monitor, it no longer turns on and off forever while Powerdevil’s DDC support is enabled, because the monitor’s own DDC implementation is completely broken, so we blacklisted it. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed an accessibility regression that caused the Install and Remove buttons on Discover’s app pages to be excluded from the tab focus chain. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Deleting a file or app that’s been made a favorite in Kicker/Kickoff/etc no longer makes it impossible to un-favorite that thing. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Fixed an issue in the Window List widget that prevented it from being able to minimize or maximize windows. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Fixed an issue in KDE’s desktop portal-based open/save dialog that caused extra UI elements added by apps to appear in the wrong places. (David Redondo, link)
Fixed an issue with the new “relative mode” for drawing tablet styluses that could cause the pointer to disappear when you have two tablets connected at the same time and each of them uses a different input mode. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Fixed two visual glitches that could be caused by re-arranging virtual desktops in the Overview effect’s grid view. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link 1 and link 2)
Fixed an issue that made clicking on Plasma UI elements unreliable when using certain non-default click modes. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Plasma 6.4.2
Fixed a case where System Settings’ Flatpak App Permissions page could cause the whole app to crash (Daniel Hast, link)
Fixed an issue that could sometimes cause Plasma to go back to sleep again right after waking up, when the “Sleep then hibernate” setting is in use. (Myrrh Periwinkle, link)
The appearance of text labels in Folder View pop-ups is once again correct. (Nate Graham, link 1 and link 2)
You’re no longer erroneously prompted to authenticate for a Wireguard VPN whose credentials are already stored in KWallet, and the wallet is set up to automatically open at login. (Jeff Chien, link)
Fixed an issue in the KDE desktop portal’s screenshot implementation that prevented the delay setting from taking effect. (David Redondo, link)
Missing app backends listed in Discover’s Settings page once again show the correct names. (Harald Sitter, link)
The brightness level shown on System Settings’ Display & Monitor page now matches the one shown in Plasma. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed an issue that caused the panel to have too much space in it until restarting Plasma if you stop displaying the date on a horizontally-laid-out Digital Clock widget. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Qt 6.8.4
Fixed a Qt bug that caused is to be extremely frustrating to re-arrange Task Manager icons because the drag target would change after you dragged an icon over another one. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Other bug information of note:
- 4 very high priority Plasma bugs (up from 3 as last week). Current list of bugs
- 28 15-minute Plasma bugs (up from 26 last week). Current list of bugs
Notable in Performance & Technical
Plasma 6.3.6
Fixed an issue that could cause stuttering when playing video content in certain video players when using a variable-refresh-rate screen. (Błażej Szczygieł, link)
Plasma 6.4.1
Fixed a recent performance regression with certain games. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
Increased the perceived responsiveness of logging into Plasma by optimizing the splash screen code and re-arranging some of the startup steps. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link 1 and link 2)
Slightly reduced the duration of the login animation, which makes logging into Plasma feel a bit snappier. (Vlad Zahorodnii, 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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