This Week in Plasma: control of frame intensity and image sharpening
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
This week we worked really hard on fixing bugs! Overall, Plasma 6.5’s rollout went smoothly. But there were some regressions, and we’ve been working on fixing them as quickly as possible. Hopefully the release of 6.5.2 on Tuesday should have all the important stuff sorted.
In addition, several features that have been in development for a while were merged for release in Plasma 6.6 in a couple of months. And with the urgency for madly fixing bugs receding, a bunch of UI improvements managed to make an appearance as well. There’s some really cool stuff here! Check it all out:
Notable New Features
Plasma 6.6.0
You can now configure your preferred level of visual boldness for the frames and outlines around Breeze-themed UI elements, or even turn them off entirely. This supports people who like everything to blend into everything else or only be separated by different background colors, as well as people who need high contrast accessibility-oriented color schemes. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)
When using hardware that supports it and version 6.20 of the Linux kernel, you’ll be able to adjust the visual “sharpness” of all content on the screen. (Adarsh G M, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4)
Implemented the USB portal, which allows sandboxed apps to request access to USB devices. (David Redondo, link)
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.5.2
Improved KRunner’s search result ordering, as the fuzzy feature introduced in Plasma 6.5 exposed and worsened some pre-existing deficiencies. Now KRunner will prioritize exact matches of names and keywords, substring matches anchored to the beginning of the name or caption, and substring matches in the middle, all before moving onto any fuzzy matches. (Harald Sitter, link 1, link 2, and link 3)
Changed the blur implementation in Plasma 6.5 to be more like it was in Plasma 6.4: now the “background contrast” effect is off by default and needs to be opted into, and the Breeze Plasma style does opt into it. This should resolve issues with blurs appearing brighter than intended, especially with dark color schemes and Plasma styles, and “fully transparent” Plasma styles. (Marco Martin, Vlad Zahorodnii, and Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Plasma 6.6.0
The slideshow wallpaper thumbnail grid that appears in a few places now has “Select All” and “Deselect All” buttons. (Adam S., link)
Improved the way some of the Info Center pages display their content. (Michał Kula, link)
The Breeze GTK theme has dispensed with button gradients, as the Breeze theme for Qt apps did a while ago. (Someone going by “chocolate image”, link)
All the sliders on System Settings’ Display & Monitor page now have the same width. (Vsevolod Stopchanskyi, link)
System Settings’ Bluetooth page has received some tweaks to better conform to the KDE Human Interface Guidelines: list item buttons are framed, the “Connect” buttons have visible text, and the page for the active device closes when Bluetooth is disabled. (Nate Graham and Ivan Tkachenko, link 1, link 2, and link 3)
You can now re-check for updates in Discover after existing updates have finished being installed and the app is prompting you to reboot. (Nate Graham, link)
Added a bit of needed padding to the top of the single-monitor layout on System Settings’ Wallpaper page. (Nate Graham, link)
You can now launch System Settings with Meta+I, which may be familiar to Windows refugees. (Méven Car, link)
Added “dxdiag” to the list of keywords that will let you find Info Center’s graphical info pages. Note to certain Phoronix commenters: the beatings will continue until morale improves. (Michał Kula, link)
Plasma’s text fields now use standard-style buttons for their inline actions, which improves visual consistency and accessibility. This change is also coming to KDE’s Kirigami-based apps in Frameworks 6.20. (Nate Graham, link)
Frameworks 6.20
The “starred/un-starred” icons used throughout Plasma and KDE apps now have margins that match other icons. (Nate Graham, link)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma 6.4.6
Fixed one of the only two known data loss issues in Plasma: where the text of a Sticky Note widget on the desktop could get lost if the note is created via middle-click-paste and never clicked in to focus it, or when Plasma crashed or the system lost power while the note had active focus with unsaved changes. Now the text is continuously auto-saved 10 seconds after the last change. (Nate Graham, link)
Screencasts of rectangular regions no longer lose resolution on screens using a scale factor higher than 100%. (David Redondo, link)
When using numberpad-based pointer movement and holding down the “5” key to simulate a press-and-hold, moving the pointer using a pointing device like a mouse no longer releases the drag prematurely. (David Redondo, link)
Fixed an issue that made wallpapers with certain symbols in their filenames fail to display thumbnail previews. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Plasma 6.5.1
Fixed a case where KWin could crash when you disconnected a screen. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed a regression that made it impossible to paste clipboard contents into WINE apps. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Fixed a bug preventing the “Swap Memory” column from showing up in System Monitor. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)
Fixed another source of the bug that made System Monitor widgets using the “Text Only” style appear empty after a restart. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)
Fixed a bug making the switch to enable and disable the firewall still interactive when no firewall backend is installed. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Plasma 6.5.2
Fixed a case where KWin could crash after moving the pointer on certain external screens plugged into certain laptops with certain graphics drivers. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed a case where the screen chooser could crash when you asked it to create a new virtual output. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed a case where Discover could crash when accessing the “Installed” page on distros with asserts turned on that ship firmware files in their main repos. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, link)
Fixed a regression that broke copy-paste from certain apps to certain VMs. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Fixed a regression that broke Spectacle’s options to exclude window shadows, borders, and titlebars from window screenshots. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed a regression that could make the pointer get stuck in games played using WINE in native Wayland mode. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed a regression that made the loopback interface visible in the Networks widget. (Nate Graham, link)
Fixed a regression that broke the Quick Launch widget’s off-by-default popup feature. (Nicolas Fella, link)
Fixed an issue that made Plasma inappropriately send notifications about loopback and other special connections after waking from sleep. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Fixed an issue affecting the day/night color change feature with sunset times after midnight. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Frameworks 6.20
Fixed one of the top 10 Plasma crashes which could happen to people using lots of System Monitor widgets. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)
Fixed a bug that made the open/save dialog not show any files when invoked by certain Flatpak apps that specified their supported mimetypes using file globbing. (David Redondo, link)
Qt 6.10.1
Fixed the most common Plasma crash in Qt. (Ulf Hermann, link)
Fixed a regression that made the glow effect for screen edges and corners not use the right color. (Hatem ElKharashy, link)
Other bug information of note:
- 4 very high priority Plasma bugs (up from 0 last week). Current list of bugs
- 30 15-minute Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
Notable in Performance & Technical
Plasma 6.6.0
The virtual desktop limit has been raised from 20 to 25, allowing you to create perfect 5x5 grids if that’s the way you roll. (Blazer Silving, link)
Frameworks 6.20
Made a technical change to the way config file locking happens, which aims to prevent a rare case where Plasma could hang forever on login when using an LDAP-administrated home directory on an NFS share. (Sebastian Sauer, link)
How You Can Help
Donate to KDE’s 2025 fundraiser! It really makes a big difference. We’ve officially hit our €50k goal and are now working towards the stretch goal of €75k! This is the time of year when KDE does over half its fundraising, evidence of all your incredible generosity. Thank you everyone for helping to keep the lights on!
If money is tight, you can help KDE by directly getting involved. Donating time is actually more impactful than donating money. 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.
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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