KDE focuses on polishing your desktop user interface

Many times, developers are blind to improve, to add, add and add, without taking too much into account what might happen. Many do it, and over time it seems that they make a break. It's not a real hiatus, but a time where they focus on polishing everything released. That is, according to Nate Graham of KDE, what the project you're working on is going to do in the next few weeks.

What is specifically mentioned in the this week's note is that it is «time for some UI polish«. Personally, I have not found inconsistencies in anything in the interface of KDE, but it is also true that I am still on 5.24, and not on the 5.25 which is now available. Personally, I would have liked more to read something about performance, although it is known that they are also working on that and there is even an initiative, the fifteen-minute bug initiative, to improve the grossest bugs.

Speaking of 15-minute bugs, this week they lowered the count from 59 to 57. One was fixed, and the other was already fixed: When using screen scaling with Systemd startup enabled by default in Plasma, it no longer sometimes uses the wrong scale factor immediately after login, causing Plasma to look blurry (on Wayland) or everything to be displayed at the wrong size (on X11) (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.25.3).

As for new features, none have been mentioned.

User interface improvements coming to KDE

• Spectacle now displays the global shortcuts used to open it with various capture modes right in the combobox used to select a capture mode (Felix Ernst, Spectacle 22.08).
• When annotating a screenshot in Spectacle, the window now resizes to accommodate the screenshot at its full size, so you don't have to scroll and zoom to see everything (Antonio Prcela, Spectacle 22.08).
• Webcams no longer appear inappropriately in the Skanpage scanner list (Alexander Stippich, Skanpage 22.08).
• In the System Preferences colors page, the last custom accent color chosen is now remembered after changing to a wallpaper-based or color scheme-based accent color and then back to a custom one (Tanbir Jishan, Plasma 5.26).
• Middle-clicking closes windows in the Desktop Grid effect, just like in the Overview and Current Windows effects; now they are all consistent (Felipe Kinoshita, Plasma 5.26).
• The wording of the desktop icon layout settings has been changed to make it clearer and more understandable (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.26).
• Improved the ordering of search results in KRunner by giving less weight to exact matches for extremely short search terms (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.26).
• The System Preferences autostart page now warns if you try to add a logon or logoff script that isn't executable, and even gives you a big friendly button you can click to fix it (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.26).
• When a new network connection is added, it is now automatically connected after closing the dialog to enter its details (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.26).
• The full-screen QR code view that the Networks widget can display can now be closed using the keyboard, and also has a visible close button in the corner (Fushan Wen and Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26).
• The search field in Kicker is no longer annoyingly slightly misaligned (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26).
• The current cursor and scroll positions in the Notes widget are now remembered after a computer restart, or Plasma only (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.26).
• Task Manager widgets can now be configured not to automatically consume all available space on your panel, allowing them to be placed immediately to the left of something else, such as a Global Menu widget (Yaroslav Bolyukin, Plasma 5.26).
• Displaying the Window List widget text is now optional (but remains enabled by default) in a horizontal panel, allowing people to revert to the old style of Plasma 5.24 and earlier if they prefer (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26).

Bug fixes and performance improvements

• Elisa's sidebar should no longer sometimes lead to the wrong page when multiple items in it are clicked under certain circumstances (Yerrey Dev, Elisa 22.04.3).
• In Plasma Wayland session, the System Preferences page in tablet mode no longer crashes the second time it is opened (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.24.6).
• Fixed one of the seemingly numerous ways that a panel on an external display could disappear when that external display was disconnected and reconnected (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24.6).
• Grid items in the Kickoff app launcher now display relevant tooltips on hover, as originally intended (Noah Davis, Plasma 5.24.6)
• Fixed one way Plasma could crash right after login on a laptop with an external HDMI display connected (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.25.3).
• In the networks widget, the "Show QR Code" button no longer appears inappropriately for networks that do not support QR code detection, such as cable networks and VPNs (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.25.3).
• In the Plasma Wayland session, changing the screen resolution to something not officially supported by the screen no longer sometimes causes System Preferences to crash (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.25.3).
• In the Plasma Wayland session, activating windows via a touch screen in the Overview, Present Windows, and Desktop Grid effects work again (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.25.3).
• The password field on the lock and login screens becomes clear and centered again when an incorrect password is entered (Derek Christ, Plasma 5.25.3).
• When using Plasma, KWin effects no longer play at the wrong animation speed if in the past the speed of the animations was adjusted in the compositing page of the system settings outside of Plasma (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23.3 ).
• It is possible to manually open more than one instance of kcmshell (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25.3).
• Fixed various UI crashes in various non-default task switcher views (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.25.3).
• Okular now appears as expected in the "Open With..." dialog displayed by sandboxed applications (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.26 with Okular 22.08).
• The recent documents list in the GTK file dialog is no longer inappropriately cleared after using certain KDE applications (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.96).
• When creating a new file using the common “create new file” menu items, any custom file extension used in the file name is no longer replaced by the default (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.96).
• Not from KDE but affects KDE: when toggling a screen on or off in a multiscreen layout, desktops in the new layout now have the correct wallpaper (Fushan Wen, Qt 6.3.2, but has been moved back in the collection of KDE Qt patches).

When will this all come to KDE?

Plasma 5.25.3 will arrive on Tuesday, July 12, Frameworks 5.96 will be available on July 9th and Gear 22.04.3 two days earlier on July 7th. KDE Gear 22.08 already has an official date, August 18. Plasma 5.24.6 will arrive on July 5, and Plasma 5.26 will be available from October 11.

To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the repository backports from KDE or use an operating system with special repositories like Kde neon or any distribution whose development model is Rolling Release.