This week in KDE: day color

We’re getting close to the Plasma 5.26 beta and plenty of features have landed before the soft feature freeze–the point at which new features need discussion before being merge-able. Many are mentioned below! But now, the idea is to focus on bugfixing and UI polish for the next six weeks before the final release of Plasma 5.26, and assistance is greatly appreciated. If you’re a developer who’s excited about Plasma, the time to fix bugs is now! Which bugs? These bugs! Pick a bug and fix it!

New Features

On System Settings’ Night Color page, you can now set a day color in addition to a night color for maximum flexibility (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 5.26. Link):

Discover now displays content ratings for apps that support them! (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.26. Link):

Discover now lets you change the name used for submitting a review (Bernardo Gomes Negri, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Discover now has a “Share” button on each app’s details page that lets you send a link to the app to someone else (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Discover now checks to make sure there’s enough free space before updating, and warns you when there isn’t (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.26. Link)

You can now configure what happens when you activate a window that’s currently living on another Virtual Desktop: you get switched to that window’s Virtual Desktop (the default setting) or the window jumps to your current Virtual Desktop (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 5.26. Link):

User Interface Improvements

When using a multi-monitor setup, window position is now remembered on a per-screen basis, so when screens are plugged in and unplugged, windows that have not been manually moved will be automatically moved to the last screen they were known to be on (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Bluetooth device pairing/permission/etc notifications will now appear even when you’re in Do Not Disturb mode, so you don’t miss them (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.26. Link)

The Color Picker widget’s popup now features a placeholder message when there are no colors in it, and it lets you remove saved colors (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.26. Link 1 and Link 2)

The compact representation of a standalone Media Controller widget (not the one that appears in the System Tray by default) now shows you the title, artist, and album art of the currently-playing track (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.26. Link):

You can now also zoom in using the Meta+Plus keyboard shortcut, which should be easier for people with ISO keyboards than the old default of just Meta+Equals (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Significant Bugfixes

(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, etc.)

When your battery reaches the “critically low” threshold, the screen will no longer be inappropriately brightened if it was already under the brightness level that it would be automatically set to (Louis Moureaux, Plasma 5.24.7. Link)

Applying a cursor theme that inherits itself no longer renders you unable to log into your user account (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer sometimes crashes when dragging an attachment from Thunderbird (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

In Discover, clicking the button to delete the user data for for a no-longer-installed app that came from a local Flatpak bundle (not a more common .flatpakref file or an app from a remote repo) no longer deletes all user data for all Flatpak apps (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Other bug-related information of interest:

• 49 15-minute Plasma bugs (up from 46 last week). Current list of bugs
• 21 Very high priority Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
• 112 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

…And everything else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! 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 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.