This week we have a little bit of everything! Hopefully everyone should be able to find something to like:
15-Minute Bugs Resolved
Current number of bugs: 68, down from 70. 0 added and 2 resolved:
When Discover’s window is narrow/mobile mode and you search for something, the search field now disappears as expected when you resize the window to be wider (Matej Starc, Plasma 5.24.6)
System Settings’ sidebar view now remains visually in sync when the page shown by the main panel is changed by something else, such as opening a different page from KRunner (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.24.6)
New Features
Elisa is now able to display lyrics embedded in files that are using the LRC format, and automatically scroll the lyrics view as the song plays! (Han Young, Elisa 22.08)
There is now a user-facing option to control Tablet Mode! It retains its current default value of “switch automatically when relevant” which is only available on Wayland, but you can now additionally force it to be always on always off, and those options work on X11 too! (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.25):
System Monitor now has an option to make a page start loading data as soon as the app is opened–rather than as soon as the page is accessed–and the default History page now uses it by default (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.25)
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
Yakuake no longer inappropriately opens on the active screen when configured to always open on a specific screen (Jonathan F., Yakuake 22.04.1)
When using Gwenview’s Crop tool with a fixed aspect ratio, changing the values in the size spinboxes now works properly (Alban Boissard, Gwenview 22.08)
Fixed a semi-common way that Plasma could crash when you remove a panel that has a System Tray widget on it (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24.6)
In the Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer crashes when you hit Alt+Tab while the context menu for a window titlebar is visible (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24.6)
The Overview effect no longer shows your panels, confusing you into thinking they’re interactive when they’re really not (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.24.6)
In the Plasma Wayland session, when something is recording your screen, the icon that appear in your system tray to notify you of this now appears in the visible part of the tray where you’ll actually see it, instead of only in the popup where it would be missed and fail to achieve its purpose in life (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24.6)
System Monitor Widgets now load handmade presets correctly. Note that you will need to remake your presets for this to work (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.24.6)
When you’ve set Discover to restart automatically after installing updates, now it only does so if all of the updates were applied successfully (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24.6)
In the Plasma Wayland session, when a KDE app is activated from another KDE app, the activated app now raises itself, just like it does on X11. This also makes the launch feedback animation work for apps launched from Kickoff, KRunner, and other pieces of KDE software! (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.25) Note that when an app is activated and does not raise as you would expect, if either (or both) of the apps is a 3d-party app, it’s because that app needs to implement the xdg_activation_v1 Wayland protocol
In the Plasma Wayland session, a severe visual glitch experienced by users of NVIDIA GPUs has been fixed (Erik Kurzinger, Plasma 5.25)
In the Plasma Wayland session, hitting Meta+V to show a menu of the clipboard contents now shows an actual menu at the actual cursor position, rather than a standalone window in the center of the screen (David Redondo, Plasma 5.25)
In the Plasma Wayland session, you can now activate global shortcuts while dragging a window (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.25)
The Digital Clock applet’s “Copy to Clipboard” menu item now respects whether you’re using 24-hour time or 12-hour time (Felipe Kinoshita, Plasma 5.25)
Icon previews are once again shown for files on NFS or NTFS drives, the Trash, Plasma Vaults, KDE Connect mounts, and other non-local locations (David Faure, Frameworks 5.94). Note that this means preview generation can once again cause slowdowns and freezes in Dolphin when accessing those locations if they are slow, and we are working on a better way to avoid this without throwing the baby out with the bathwater by disabling previews entirely!
When you drag-and-drop an image onto your desktop and choose “Set as Wallpaper”, it will now automatically switch to the correct wallpaper plugin that supports single image wallpapers if you were currently using something different (Fushan Wen, Frameworks 5.95)
User Interface Improvements
When you provide incorrect authentication credentials on the lock or login screens, the whole UI now shakes a bit (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.25):
Tabs in GTK apps using the Breeze GTK theme now match the tab styling in Qt and KDE apps (Artem Grinev, Plasma 5.25)
Menubars and areas that use the menubar color in GTK apps using the Breeze GTK theme now use the header color as expected, if you’re using a color scheme with header colors (Artem Grinev, Plasma 5.25):
Toolbar buttons with icons and toolbar buttons without icons now share the same text baseline, so their text will always align vertically (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.25):
In the Plasma Wayland session, multi-finger touchscreen gestures (Did you know that KWin has touchscreen gestures?) now follow your fingers just like touchpad and edge swipe gestures do! (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.25)
In the Plasma Wayland session, actions that trigger when you touch a screen edge are now disabled by default while there are any full screen windows, which improves the UX for games where you touch screen edges a lot (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.25)
The Dictionary widget now shows you an appropriate error message when it can’t fetch the definition (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.25):
The weather widget no longer shows decimals for its temperature display when used on a Panel (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25):
On System Settings’ Login Screen (SDDM) page, the “Halt command” and “Reboot command” text fields are now editable, so you can type in a command by hand, or add a command-line argument to it if you’d like, instead of only being able to choose a command using the Open dialog (Someone going by the pseudonym “oioi 555, Plasma 5.25)
…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