KDE adds printer ink level notification while continuing to polish the UI

  • KDE publishes the latest news.
  • Plasma 6.5 will display a notification if your printer is low on ink.
  • The user interface continues to be polished.
Pablinux

4 minutes

Low Ink Notification in KDE

KDE GUADEC had nothing to celebrate, so there was no break last week, which was another one in providing us with a list of the latest developments from the last seven days. The next major stop will come in late 2025, but they are still working to improve the plasma 6.4 that we already have in hand. Now, today's most notable news will come in Plasma 6.5, which we still have to wait several weeks for.

What follows is the list with news that we've heard about this week. We remind you once again that what's included here excludes the bug fixes section, and anyone interested in learning more should visit the original article published on the KDE blog, a link to which we'll add at the end of this post.

As for new features, the only one we've been told is that, for supported printers, Plasma 6.5.0 will alert you when ink is low.

Low Ink Notification in Plasma 6.5

KDE User Interface Improvements

plasma 6.4.4

  • Notifications marked as "low priority" or manually set to not appear in the notification history are now selectively ignored, and they will appear in the notification history if they arrived during Do Not Disturb mode. This is because otherwise, they would simply disappear, and there would be no way to view them.
  • The click zones for desktop items now match the visual style; clicking on a seemingly empty zone no longer selects a file or folder without any highlighting effect.

plasma 6.5.0

  • Key repeat has been disabled for several global shortcuts that could cause rapid full-screen flashing when holding the shortcut, as this could pose a risk to photosensitive individuals. The affected actions include enabling overview, full-screen mode, maximizing/unmaximizing, and inverting screen colors.
  • The “Someone has started sharing this screen” notification now only appears after the connection has been fully established and screen sharing has actually begun, rather than displaying when the connection is initiated.
  • The confirmation dialog when deleting a network connection now uses the standard KDE style.
  • The spacing between menu items in the Global Menu widget is now more consistent with individual window menus.

Technical and performance in KDE

plasma 6.4.4

  • Fixed an inotify leak caused by reconfiguring the Plasma desktop or Folder View widget to display a different folder.

plasma 6.5.0

  • Support for the Wayland protocol has been implemented pointer_warp_v1 (“Pointer Warp”), which allows applications to request the compositor to move the pointer.
  • Applications using the XDG portal can now explicitly request a remote desktop or screenshot session over a new virtual output.
  • More automated tests have been added to verify basic Plasma widget loading functionality.
  • The size and position of the clipboard configuration window are now stored in the state configuration file, rather than the settings configuration file.

Coming soon to your KDE distribution

As for bugs, the 4 high-priority bugs have been maintained, and the 32-minute bugs have been reduced from 28 to 15.

KDE Plasma 6.4.4 is expected to arrive on August 5th and Frameworks 6.17 on August 8th.

Vía: KDE blog.