Many of us are still getting over our new years’ food comas, but we managed to get some cool things done anyway!
New Features
Task Manager tooltips for windows that are playing audio now show a volume slider under the playback controls (Noah Davis, Plasma 5.24):
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
Okular is now more reliable about opening and signing different kinds of password-protected documents (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 21.12.1)
Okular no longer renders fictionbook documents with incorrect whitespace in certain places, and now shows their keywords in the properties dialog (Yuri Chornoivan and Lenny Soshinskiy, Okular 22.04)
Okular no longer leaks memory when viewing documents with Optional Content links (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 22.04)
Connectivity with MTP devices now works much better overall: they now display correctly in the Disks & Devices applet, opening one in Dolphin now refreshes the view automatically when you follow the provided instructions by unlocking your device and allowing access, and the instructions are now clearer and more actionable (Harald Sitter, James John, and me: Nate Graham–but really mostly the first two guys, Plasma 5.24 and Dolphin 22.04)
Bluetooth devices that connect in a nonstandard way like PlayStation Dualshock 3 Wireless Controllers now appear in the Bluetooth applet after being connected (Bart Ribbers, Plasma 5.23.5)
Turning a monitor off and back on no longer sometimes causes certain windows to be resized (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24)
Clicking the Pause button on System Settings’ File Search page now actually pauses indexing (Yerrey Dev, Plasma 5.24)
In the Plasma Wayland session, fixed a case where window thumbnails could fail to appear on Task Manager tooltips with certain configurations (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.24)
The kimpanel popup no longer flickers while entering CJK text (Rocket Aaron, Plasma 5.24)
You can now change the user or group of a file or folder on the desktop (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.91)
Snap apps no longer inappropriately appear as mounted volumes in Places panels (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.91)
Re-mapping keys with the System Settings Advanced Keyboard page now causes any swapped modifier keys to be correctly handled by global keyboard shortcuts (Fabian Vogt, Frameworks 5.90)
User Interface Improvements
The Battery and Brightness applet now turns into just a Brightness applet on computers with no batteries but any brightness controls (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24):
Plasma applets with scrollable views now use a more consistent style (Carl Schwan, Plasma 5.24):
The Scale effect is now used by default for window opening and closing, instead of the old Fade effect (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.24)
Items are now selected after being moved or created on the desktop (Derek Christ, Plasma 5.24)
You can now see network speeds in bits per second in System Monitor applets and the app (Vishal Rao, Plasma 5.24)
In the Plasma Wayland session, the System Tray item for showing and hiding the virtual keyboard now becomes active only in tablet mode (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24)
When you enable auto-login, you are now warned about some changes you might want to make to your KWallet setup (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24):
Scrollable controls in Plasma and other QtQuick-based apps now only change their contents when you scroll on them if the cursor began over them, not when the cursor happened to pass over them because the view they live on moved while scrolling (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.90 with Plasma 5.24)
KDE apps that display relative dates now present them with much more precision (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.91):
Yakuake’s System Tray icon is now monochrome (Artem Grinev and Bogdan Covaciu, Frameworks 5.91:
Menus in QtQuick apps now have the same size and appearance as menus in QtWidgets apps (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.91)
Sliders in QtQuick apps can now be manipulated by scrolling over them, just like sliders elsewhere (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.91)
…And everything else
Keep in mind that this blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! Tons of KDE apps whose development I don’t have time to follow aren’t represented here, and I also don’t mention backend refactoring, improved test coverage, and other changes that are generally not user-facing. If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org/, where you can find blog posts by other KDE contributors detailing the work they’re doing.
How You Can Help
Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!
Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation