Plasma 6.4 is just around the corner. A beta is now available, and KDE Plasma 6.5 is going to take advantage of the few weeks remaining until the stable release to fix as many bugs as possible. That's one of the reasons why the list of major bugs keeps growing—not because they're really bothersome, but because they want to prioritize some of them. Additionally, the following list shows the first new features that Plasma XNUMX will include, the next version of the desktop, which won't arrive for a few months.
The following is the list with the most notable news that has occurred this week in the KDE world. I think it's a good point to remember that there will no longer be just five point updates for each Plasma release, but six, and that LTS releases have been discontinued.
- Plasma 6.4 will support time-of-day wallpapers. Starting with this version, wallpapers that change based on the time of day will do so automatically when the time is reached.
Improved KDE user interface
plasma 6.4
- Discover no longer includes wallpapers and other add-ons in its search results unless you start your search on the "Add-ons" page. This should make most search results much more relevant.
- The audio volume widget, which can be quite cumbersome when multiple audio devices are present, has been visually polished.
plasma 6.5
- Significant improvements have been made to the Sticky Notes widget user interface to make it easier to use on the dashboard:
- now you can resize them to be much smaller;
- change the background color from the context menu;
- And when you choose the “Transparent” background color, the colored background of the sticky notes disappears completely, which significantly reduces the outer margins if you want to save space.
- If you choose a font with the text "Display" in its name as one of your global fonts, System Preferences now warns that this is not a good idea, because these fonts are not intended for display on digital displays.
- The first time you launch the Emoji picker (which is launched via the keyboard shortcut Meta+. by default), now opens to a page showing everything, instead of the "Recents" page which would of course be empty.
- In the Networks widget, the "Hotspot" button is now always visible, but disabled when unavailable. Hovering over it indicates why it's currently unavailable and what can be done to change it.
- All debug effects have been removed from the Desktop Effects page of System Preferences and moved to the KWin Debug window.
- Improved accessibility and general keyboard navigation in the Audio Volume widget, the Flatpak page in System Preferences, and the Updates page in Discover.
Framework 6.15
- Opening the Advanced Options window from the properties dialog of a Plasma desktop element no longer freezes Plasma completely until it is closed.
- Accessibility and keyboard navigation have been improved throughout System Preferences, particularly for issues related to switching focus between page content and window sidebars and footers.
- When navigating through Kirigami-based applications and System Preferences pages using a screen reader, it will no longer unnecessarily announce “LAYER PANEL ZERO ELEMENTS” all the time.
Coming soon to your KDE distribution
As for bugs, this week KDE has 3 high priority bugs and 27 of 15 minutes left, which is one less high priority and 5 more than 15 minutes.
KDE Plasma 6.3.6 is expected to arrive on July 8, Plasma 6.4 on June 17, and Frameworks 6.15 on July 13.
Images and content: KDE blog.