This week in KDE: Plasma 5.18 is nigh

The release of Plasma 5.18 is upon us! In 10 more days, it will be yours to have and to hold. Until then, the Plasma developers have been working feverishly to fix bugs–and land some welcome improvements in 5.19! Check it out:

New Features

• As part of the ongoing “ Make the System Tray applet pop-ups look better” initiative , we now have the first version of the new Audio Volume pop-up . In addition to looking better, it includes a new and more obvious global “Raise maximum volume” setting , a global mute mode , and a less visually intrusive way to set the default audio device (George Vogiatzis, Plasma 5.19.0):
• The KInfoCenter app now looks radically better. Under the hood, it’s actually now using System Settings to display everything ; the old app is no more! This fixes various visual bugs afflicting the old app such as inconsistent tooltip appearance and weird uninteractive tree view headers that did nothing when clicked on (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.19.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• In Elisa, queuing all tracks from all genres now works (Alexander Stippich, Elisa 19.12.2)
• Elisa’s global playlist no longer experiences visual glitches when loading .m3u playlist files or deleting the first song of an album (Alexander Stippich, Elisa 19.12.2)
• Dolphin’s “Natural Sorting” mode now works with all sort orders (George Vogiatzis, Dolphin 20.04.0)
• Dolphin’s “you’re about to drop an item here” indicator no longer disappears when dragging an item right above a selected item in the Places panel (George Vogiatzis, Dolphin 19.12.2)
• When Spectacle is configured to take a new screenshot if the PrintScreen key is pressed while Spectacle is already running, it will now take that screenshot using the currently-selected options rather than the default options (David Redondo, Spectacle 20.04.0)
• Apps with spaces in their names now behave properly when pinned to the Task Manager (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
• GTK apps can now use fonts with spaces in their names (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Context menus opened from notifications now look correct and appear in the right place on Wayland (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Fixed the weather station chooser page again after breaking it last time while fixing something else (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The Folder View pop-up now uses the correct text color for items’ labels (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• Entries in the new System Tray configurations page now always have the right icons (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.18.0)

User Interface Improvements

• KInfoCenter now shows IPv6 network information (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The Task Manager tooltip highlight effect now looks better for tooltips that include built-in playback controls for media (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• Buttons in Notifications are now laid out in a more compact way (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
  
• VLC’s Breeze theme icon now looks more like the original icon (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.67):
  

How You Can Help

Please test the Plasma 5.18 beta release ! You can find out how here . If you find bugs, file them –especially if they are regressions from Plasma 5.17. We want to get as much testing, bug filing, and bugfixing as possible during the one-month beta period so that the official release is as smooth as possible.

More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out more ways to help 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 .