If last week’s post was heavy on the bugfixes, this week we’re overflowing with juicy features! But don’t worry, we didn’t forget about the 5-minute bugs and manages to squash three. Feast your eyes:
15-Minute Bugs Resolved
Current number of bugs: 72, down from 73. 2 added and 3 resolved:
The Battery widget now always appears in the System Tray on login, instead of sometimes being missing until you manually restart Plasma (Jolene K, Plasma 5.24.5)
The date displayed in the Digital Clock widget now always matches the real date (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.24)
In the Plasma X11 session, volume OSDs no longer sometimes appear in the top-left corner of the screen (Jim Jones, Frameworks 5.94)
New Features
When you click on a Global Theme in System Settings, it will now tell you what changes it’s going to make, and it gives you the opportunity to only apply certain parts of it! (Dominic Hayes, Plasma 5.25):
You can now set your accent color to be automatically generated based on the colors in the current wallpaper! It even changes the accent color automatically when the wallpaper changes! (Tanbir Jishan, Plasma 5.25):
You can now edit your color scheme to make the accent color subtly tint all of its colors! And color schemes can now be configured this way by default, so folks uploading color schemes to store.kde.org can also set a tint for them out-of-the-box (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.25):
The amount of tint is configurable too, you you can make the tint subtle or ridiculously garish, according to your aesthetic preferences. And yes, this works with wallpaper-aware accent colors too!
For apps using xdg-desktop-portals (e.g. Flatpak and Snap apps), Plasma now supports the new “Dynamic launcher” portal that allows apps to create and edit .desktop files for better system integration (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.25)
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
Spectacle no longer disables all the buttons when you cancel taking a screenshot if there was already one in the main window at the time (Antonio Prcela, Spectacle 22.04.1)
Elisa no longer needs to be restarted after you embed a category in the sidebar, or change the thing that’s embedded in the sidebar (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 22.04.1)
In the Plasma Wayland session, SDL apps no longer crash when an external screen is unplugged (Weng Xuetian, Plasma 5.24.5)
The Comics widget once again works (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.24.5)
On System Settings’ Quick Settings page, the “Change Wallpaper…” button now works when you have more than one Activity (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24.5)
Searching in KRunner, Application Launcher, Overview (or any other KRunner-powered search) now returns matches that are text files, or use a file format that inherits from the plaintext format (Julian Rolfes and Natalie Clarius, Plasma 5.24.5)
Closing the Widget Explorer sidebar now deletes it, saving some memory and fixing a bug whereby the previous search query would be inappropriately remembered the next time you open it (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24.5)
KRunner no longer hangs forever when you ask it to define a “word” with spaces in it (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25)
For apps using xdg-desktop-portals (e.g. Flatpak and Snap apps), quitting or killing the app while one such portal dialog is open now closes the dialog too (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.25)
KWin rules are now re-evaluated when the set of active screens changes, so they will be correctly applied at more times (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.25)
Plasma no longer sometimes crashes when you change the wallpaper from the context menu item for image files in Dolphin or on the desktop (Jakub Nowak, Frameworks 5.94)
User Interface Improvements
Filelight’s old homepage that displayed subtly inaccurate and incorrect information has been replaced with a standard-style welcome page that doesn’t mislead you (Harald Sitter, Filelight 22.08):
Ark now displays real on-disk sizes for folders inside archives, rather than the number of items they contain (Andrey Butirsky, Ark 22.08)
Dolphin can now optionally display “Author” metadata below filenames in icon mode (Kai Uwe Broulik, Dolphin 22.08)
Discover now shows all application categories in the first level of its sidebar, rather than nested one level deep (Taavi Juursalu, Plasma 5.25):
The Networks widget’s details view now shows the frequency and BSSID of the currently connected WiFi network (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.25)
There is now a standard “loading” placeholder component in Kirigami that Kirigami apps are being ported to use, so you will always see a consistent loading indicator (Felipe Kinoshita, Frameworks 5.94):
Right-clicking on path items in URL navigators throughout KDE apps now gives you an option to open that location in a new window if you’d like, not just a new tab (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.94)
…And everything else
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 more news from other KDE contributors.
How You Can Help
If you’re a developer, check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly!
Otherwise, have a look at Get Involved - KDE Community Wiki 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
