KDE continues tirelessly developing its Plasma graphical environment. On the one hand, they polish the 6.3 series, and on the other hand, they're preparing the next 6.4 with more profound changes. And that's how things work in any development: major updates equal big changes, and the ones are for implementing patches to correct whatever is detected. As for new features, there's always one that might interest us more than others.
What comes next is the list with those news from last week, shorter than in the past because in this new stage we have decided not to include the corrected bugs and only link to the original article for those who want all the information.
What's new in the KDE interface
In the upcoming Plasma 6.3.4 release, keyboard navigation and interaction have been added to the user switching widget popup. Expected in Plasma 6.4:
- KMenuEdit has received a UI overhaul, including a simplification of the default toolbar contents, displaying a neatly curated hamburger menu by default, and adopting modern-style tool view tabs (header image).
- When installing apps in Discover, progress feedback now appears right where you were looking, instead of in the opposite corner of the window.
- The Plasma Calculator widget now announces the calculated result using a screen reader, if one is active.
- Improved keyboard navigation for the Plasma Calculator widget; navigation now wraps within the same row or column.
- In System Monitor table views, you can now press Ctrl+A to select all, as expected.
- After editing a page in System Monitor, the app now scrolls to display a newly added row if it would otherwise appear outside the visible area.
- KWin's "Dim Screen for Administrator Mode" add-on is now enabled by default, helping to draw attention to authentication prompts, making them less likely to be missed or overlooked, especially on a cluttered desktop.
- OSDs are now systematically referred to as "OSD" wherever they can be disabled.
In the upcoming KDE Frameworks 6.13 release, System Monitor now displays a more user-friendly display when asked to report the battery level of a device whose battery technology it cannot determine.
Bugs and availability
This week, 21 "15-minute" bugs and 3 very high-priority bugs were fixed.
KDE Plasma 6.3.4 is expected to arrive on Tuesday, April 1st, Plasma 6.4 on June 17th, and Frameworks 6.13 on April 11th.
Images and content: KDE blog.