This Week in Plasma: Auto-Lock and Unlock for Remote Desktop Sessions

Nate Graham, John Veness, and Salman Farooq — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:01 +0000

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week saw a bunch of work on some core infrastructure components, like the RDP server, login greeter, and screen configuration tooling. That’s in addition to lots of other good work, too:

Notable new features

Plasma 6.8

You can now configure Plasma’s built-in remote desktop server to automatically lock the session after the last connected RDP client disconnects. (Nick Haghiri, krdp MR #211)

Plasma Login Manager now remembers the last-used session for each user. (Jin Liu and Oliver Beard, plasma-login-manager MR #176 and libplasma MR #1557)

Notable UI improvements

Plasma 6.8

Discover’s transaction progress view now shows items in groups, with the ones currently in progress in a group at the top. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, discover MR #1219)

On multi-screen setups, the existing Meta + 1-9 shortcuts for jumping straight to a task now target the panel on the screen you’re actively using, rather than always going to the primary monitor’s panel. This matches the behavior added to last week’s new task-switching shortcuts. (Salman Farooq, plasma-desktop MR #3884 and plasma-workspace MR #6848)

You can now find languages in Plasma Setup by searching for their locale code, localized name, or English name. (Tiziano Gaia, plasma-setup MR #109)

Frameworks 6.29

Further improved the visual fidelity of small icons drawn with the Kirigami.Icon component. (Méven Car, kirigami MR #2127)

Notable bug fixes

Plasma 6.6.7

Fixed an issue that made KWin crash on login for newer NVIDIA GPUs using the latest NVIDIA drivers in conjunction with various color management features. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #523287)

Restored the ability to play full-screen video in Chromium-based browsers on a virtual screen, such as those used when screen recording. (Xaver Hugl, Bugzilla #523353)

Fixed an issue that could make Plasma freeze and then take down apps as well after you switched activities with unusual values in your Plasma config file. (Shouvik Kar, KDE Bugzilla #522039)

Fixed two visual glitches affecting the Digital Clock widget: one that made the layout overflow on a panel right after turning on the “always show seconds” setting, and another one that made the time zone label fail to use the systemwide font family. (Hunter White and Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #523010 and KDE Bugzilla #523164)

When an image used in a slideshow in the Media Frame widget is changed on disk, the widget now notices it properly, rather than replacing it with a blank frame. (David Wild, KDE Bugzila #521538)

Plasma 6.7.4

Fixed a weird bug that could break Plasma Login Manager after you unplugged a screen and plugged it back in while on the login screen. (Oliver Beard, KDE Bugzilla #523313)

Fixed a bug that could make KWin crash on login on various laptops. (Xaver Hugl, kwin MR #9632)

Fixed a case where System Settings could crash when Fanatec racing pedals were plugged in. (Sebastian Sauer, KDE Bugzilla #522886)

Restored the ability to change the wallpaper and apply Plasma settings to Plasma Login Manager for users who upgraded from Plasma 6.6. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #517081)

Frameworks 6.29

Fixed a surprisingly common yet random-seeming way that Plasma could crash. (Shouvik Kar, KDE Bugzilla #519614)

QML-based KDE apps once again remember whether they were maximized or not across launches. (Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #522205)

Worked around a Qt bug that made some keyboard shortcuts in Kirigami-based apps not get assigned when using the app in certain languages other than English. (Manuel Alcaraz Zambrano, kirigami MR #2124)

Icons drawn by the Kirigami.Icon component now use the correct aspect ratio for portrait-orientation images when they’re being rounded to standard icon sizes. (Méven Car, kirigami MR #2126)

Notable in performance & technical

Plasma 6.8

We have created a new kscreenctl tool, intended as a future replacement for the old kscreen-doctor tool. It includes more features, more robustness, and a more conventional usage method. (Vlad Zahorodnii, kscreen MR #487)

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Discover is now faster to load icons for Flatpak apps. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, discover MR #1366)

How you can help

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You can also help out by making a donation! This helps cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keeps KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get a new Plasma feature or a bug fix mentioned here

Push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.

Salman Farooq on KDE Blogs

This Week in Plasma: Auto-Lock and Unlock for Remote Desktop Sessions

Notable new features

Plasma 6.8

Notable UI improvements

Plasma 6.8

Frameworks 6.29

Notable bug fixes

Plasma 6.6.7

Plasma 6.7.4

Frameworks 6.29

Notable in performance & technical

Plasma 6.8

How you can help

To get a new Plasma feature or a bug fix mentioned here