This Week in Plasma: Virtual desktops only on the primary screen
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
This week something that I know a lot of people have been wanting for a long time was implemented: the ability to limit virtual desktops to only the primary screen! Thanks very much to Kristen McWilliam for this long-awaited feature, which arrives in Plasma 6.6.
But wait, there’s more…
Other Notable New Features
Plasma 6.6.0
The Networks widget now has a little button you can click on to connect to a network using a QR code, via the Qrca helper app. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
The DrKonqi crash reporting system now notices crashes for non-KDE apps too, and prompts you to report them to their developer or your distro. (Harald Sitter, link)
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.5.3
Added support for the MHC2 tag in ICC profiles, which is a non-standard tag used in Windows, but without support for it, profiles used on Windows won't produce identical color effects when used in KWin. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Plasma 6.6.0
Colors picked using the color picker now reflect the raw RGB values of the color, rather than a tinted version that might be affected by the Night Light effect or the use of an ICC profile. (Błażej Szczygieł, link)
Breeze-themed GTK apps now have a bit of extra padding on either side of their toolbars to prevent the leading and trailing items from touching the edges of the window, and some ugly black lines have turned into nicer-looking appropriately-colored lines. (Kevin Duan, link 1 and link 2)
System Settings’ Remote Desktop page now displays any errors inline, so you don’t have to go digging around in the journal log to find them and wonder why it’s not working. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)
Hot-corner effects now trigger for all screens, rather than just the corner of one screen. This can be disabled if you don't like it. (Yiqun Lian, link)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma 6.5.2
Fixed a regression that broke adding a new widget by clicking on it, as opposed to dragging it somewhere. (Nicolas Fella, link)
The text at the bottom of the time zone picker map is now translatable, and should start being translated into languages other than English soon. (Nicolas Fella, link)
The selection checkbox for wallpaper slideshow grid items no longer overlaps with the “I have light and dark versions available” icon in the corner. (Adam S. link)
Fixed an issue that made some toolbar items in the Font Viewer app invisible. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Fixed an issue that could make the text displayed by the “Show Compositing” and “FPS” effects appear off-screen with certain multi-monitor setups. (Pavel Duong, link)
Plasma 6.5.3
Fixed a case where Plasma could crash when you removed widgets or panels. (Marco Martin, link)
Fixed a case where Discover could crash while installing a Flatpak app. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, link)
Fixed a weird regression that made it impossible to put icons on desktops of screens that didn’t have any panels on them. (Marco Martin, link)
Fixed a regression that made inactive windows get activated if you happened to hover over anything in them that made a tooltip appear. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed an issue that could unexpectedly give screens in HDR mode a greenish tint when using the Night Light feature. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Closing the lid on a laptop whose screen had already been disabled no longer sometimes shifts the layout of external screens. (Méven Car, link)
Fixed a visual glitch in “Active Window” mode screenshots that made their window borders look a bit weird when using a fractional scale factor. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Plasma 6.6.0
Fixed a few more cases where desktop icons could shift around, this time in response to changes in screen resolution and arrangement. (Błażej Szczygieł, link)
Added another page to the HDR calibration wizard to determine the maximum fullscreen average luminance. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Clarified an unclear label in the OpenConnect VPN authentication dialog. (Philipp Kiemle, link)
Frameworks 6.20
Fixed a case where the DrKonqi crash reporter could itself crash when you clicked on the “Details” button of a notification about something else crashing. (David Edmundson, link)
Fixed a case where trashing a file on an NFS share would move it to the local trash (which might be very slow, depending on the network) rather than the remote trash. (Oliver Schramm, link)
Fixed a regression that could make Discover prompt you to send feedback about it every time you launched it. (Nicolas Fella, link)
Electron 40
Fixed a bug that resulted in all system tray icons of Electron-based apps having the same ID, which meant that changing the icon visibility setting for one of them changed it for all of them. (Damglador, link)
Other bug information of note:
- 4 very high priority Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
- 35 15-minute Plasma bugs (up from 30 last week). Current list of bugs
Notable in Performance & Technical
Plasma 6.5.2
Fixed a source of elevated CPU usage in the SDDM login screen. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Plasma 6.5.3
Made KWin more robust against a graphics issue that could make the screen go black after the system displays the Plymouth boot splash screen, but before it gets to the SDDM login screen. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed a source of elevated CPU usage in Plasma’s wallpaper dialog and page in System Settings. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Improved visual smoothness while switching modes on multi-monitor setups with VRR-capable screens. (Hongfei Shang, Link)
Plasma 6.6.0
Reduced Plasma’s memory usage by over 100 MiB by being cleverer about unloading wallpaper images that aren't needed anymore. This had the side effect of making tiled wallpapers impossible with the new system for technical reasons, so tiled wallpapers have been re-introduced in the form of a new “Tiled” wallpaper plugin, so you can still rock out to your favorite KDE 1 nose wallpaper. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link 1 and link 2)
Improved the robustness of drag-and-drop operations between XWayland-using windows and native Wayland windows. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Toggling Bluetooth can no longer briefly freeze the UI of whatever you used to toggle it. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
The current activity is now stored in the state file, not the config file. (Nicolas Fella, link)
How You Can Help
Donate to KDE’s 2025 fundraiser! It really makes a big difference. Believe it or not, we're up to 91% of our €75k stretch goal! This is tremendous, and I can't thank everyone enough for their 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.
Newsletter
Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.