This Week in Plasma: UI and performance improvements
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
This week there were many user interface and performance improvements — some quite consequential. So let’s get right into it!
Notable New Features
Plasma 6.6.0
Windows can now be selectively excluded from screen recording! This can be invoked from the titlebar context menu, Task Manager context menu, and window rules. (Stanislav Aleksandrov, link)
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.6.0
With a dark color scheme, the blur effect now produces a blur that’s darker (ideally back to the level seen in Plasma 6.4) and also more vibrant in cases where there are bright colors behind it. People seemed to like this! But for those who don’t, the saturation value of the blur effect is now user-configurable, so you can dial it in to your preferred level. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link 1, link 2, and link 3)
When clicking on grouped Task Manager icons to cycle through their windows, full-screen windows will no longer always be raised first. Now, windows will be raised in the order of their last use. (Grégori Mignerot, link)
Did a round of UI polishing on the portal remote control dialog to make it look better and read more naturally. (Nate Graham and Joshua Goins, link 1 link 2, link 3 and link 4)
When you open the Kickoff Application Launcher and your pointer happens to end up right on top of one of the items in the Favorites view, it won’t be selected automatically. (Christoph Wolk, link)
The Kickoff Application Launcher widget now tries very hard to keep the first item of the search results view selected — at least until the point where you focus the list and start navigating to another item. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Discover now uses more user-friendly language when it’s being used to find apps that can open a certain file type. (Taras Oleksy, link)
You’re now far less likely to accidentally raise an unintended app when a notification happens to appear right underneath something you’re dragging-and-dropping. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
KMenuEdit now lets you select multiple items at a time for faster deletion. (Alexander Wilms, link)
The QR code dialog invokable from the clipboard has been removed, and instead the QR code is shown inline in the widget. This makes it large enough to actually use and also reduces unnecessary code. (Fushan Wen, link)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma 6.5.3
Fixed a rare case where KWin could crash when the system wakes from sleep. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Worked around a QML compiler bug in Qt that made the power and session buttons in the Application Launcher widget overlap with the tab bar if you resized its popup. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Plasma 6.5.4
Fixed a regression in menu sizing that got accidentally backported to Plasma 6.5.3. All should be well in 6.5.4, and some distros have backported the fix already. (Akseli Lahtinen and Nate Graham, link)
Fixed a Plasma 6 regression that broke the ability to activate the System Tray’s expanded items popup with a keyboard shortcut. (Cursor AI, operated by Mikhail Sidorenko, link)
Fixed a regression caused by a Qt change that broke the clipboard’s Actions menu from being able to appear when the configuration dialog wasn’t open. (Fushan Wen, link)
Fixed a bug that could make the Plasma panel’s custom size chooser appear on the wrong screen. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Fixed a bug that could make the clipboard contents get sent many times when it’s being set programmatically in a portal-using app. (David Redondo, link)
Fixed a memory leak in Plasma’s desktop. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Fixed a memory leak in the clipboard Actions menu. (Fushan Wen, link)
KWin’s zoom effect now saves its current zoom level a little bit after you change it, rather than at logout. This prevents a situation where the system is inappropriately zoomed in (or not zoomed in) after a KWin crash or power loss. (Ritchie Frodomar, link)
Fixed a bug that made the optional Textual List representation of multiple windows in the Task Manager widget fail to get focus when using medium focus stealing prevention. (David Redondo, link)
Plasma 6.6.0
Worked around a bug in some XWayland-using games that made it impossible type text into certain popups. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Clearing KRunner’s search history now takes effect immediately, rather than only after KRunner was restarted. (Nate Graham, link)
With a very narrow display and a high scale factor, the buttons on the login, lock, and logout screens can no longer get cut off; now they wrap onto the next line. (Nate Graham, link)
Frameworks 6.21
Fixed a bug that could confuse KWallet — when being used as a Secret Service proxy for KeePassXC — into becoming convinced that it needed to create a new wallet. (Marco Martin, link)
Fixed two memory leaks affecting QML-based System Settings pages. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link 1 and link 2)
Other bug information of note:
- 4 very high priority Plasma bugs (Same as last week). Current list of bugs
- 34 15-minute Plasma bugs (Up from 31 last week). Current list of bugs
Notable in Performance & Technical
Plasma 6.5.3
Apps that use the Keyboard Shortcuts Portal to set shortcuts can now remove them in the same way. (David Redondo, link)
You can now use Spectacle’s Active Window mode to take a screenshot of WINE windows. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Plasma 6.6.0
Made a major improvement to the smoothness of animations throughout Plasma and KWin for people using screens with a refresh rate higher than 60 Hz! (David Edmundson, link)
Reduced the amount of unnecessary work KWin does during its compositing pipeline. (Xaver Hugl, link)
When you delete a whole category’s worth of shortcuts on System Settings’ Shortcuts page, all the shortcuts get grayed out and cease to be interactive, and a warning message tells you they’ll seen be deleted and gives you a chance to undo that before it happens. (Nate Graham, link)
Frameworks 6.21
KConfig now parses config files in a stream rather than opening them all at once, which allows it to notice early when a file is corrupted or improperly formatted. This prevents freezes in several places. (Méven Car, link 1, link 2, and link 3)
When using the Systemd integration functionality (which is on by default if Systemd is present), programs will no longer fail to launch while there are any environment variables beginning with a digit, as this is something Systemd doesn’t support. (Méven Car, link)
How You Can Help
Donate to KDE’s 2025 fundraiser! It really makes a big difference. Believe it or not, we’ve already hit out our €75k stretch goal and are €5k towards the final one. I’m just in awe of the generosity of the KDE community and userbase. Thank you all for helping KDE to grow and prosper!
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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