This week in KDE: new features start rolling in

KDE developers have started pumping out some seriously excellent new features for Plasma and apps releases this week, with more stuff on the way soon! In addition, many bugs were fixed, and the UI polish continued apace. Take a look!

New Features

• Elisa can now be closed to the System Tray, so it can stay playing without having any windows open (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 20.04.0)
• Dolphin has a new “Duplicate” feature that can be used to quickly create copies of selected items (me: Nate Graham, Dolphin 20.04.0)
• The global menu applet now works on Wayland (Carson Black, Plasma 5.19.0)
• The Baloo file indexer’s “Index hidden files” setting is now user-configurable on Baloo’s System Settings page (Stefan Brüns, Plasma 5.19.0):
  
• It’s now possible to run arbitrary user-specified shell scripts in response to switching activities (Ivan Čukić, Plasma 5.19.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Gwenview no longer hangs on launch when there’s an entry in the system clipboard that came from a phone paired using KDE Connect (Tomasz Meresiński, Gwenview 20.04.0)
• Resuming paused SFTP file transfer jobs now works (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.04.0)
• Elisa now exports the currently-playing song’s album art correctly (for example, to the Media Player applet) for all songs (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 20.04.0)
• Fonts with non-default style names (e.g. “Condensed”, “Oblique”, “Book”, etc) now at least display the regular version in GTK apps ; however note that the exact version chosen cannot be displayed due to a GTK design decision (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.18.4)
• After logging into an encrypted home directory with all the KWallet PAM bits set up properly, you’re no longer irritatingly and redundantly asked for your password to connect to a wireless network (Albert Astals Cid, Plasma 5.18.4
• Resetting Breeze settings to their default values now also resets the “Draw a circle around close button” setting, as expected (Paul McAuley, Plasma 5.18.4)
• It’s now possible to apply a new color scheme even if the current one was not found (Cyril Rossi, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Updating downloaded add-ons from the new “Get New [thing]” dialog now works (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.69)
• ssh:// links once again work properly (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.69)
• Vertical spacing between checkboxes and radio buttons is once again correct in QML-based software (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.69)

User Interface Improvements

• The menu items in Okular’s View Mode menu now have more descriptive icons (David Hurka, Okular 1.10.0):
  
• The KDE Connect System Tray pop-up now shows a more polished and consistent presentation for the case when your device is unreachable or no devices are paired (me: Nate Graham, KDE Connect 20.04.0):
  
• Gwenview’s “Exit Full Screen” button in the top-right corner now displays text like Kate’s button does, so it’s easier to figure out how to exit full screen mode (me: Nate Graham, Gwenview 20.04.0):
  
• When a Plasma vault cannot be opened for some reason, it now shows you the full error message so you can at least try to fix it yourself (Ivan Čukić, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Sticky Note widgets now display a visible “Remove” button so it’s easier to get rid of transient or unintentionally-created sticky notes (and remember that there’s an undo if you remove it by accident) (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.0):
  
• The “Animation Speed” slider in the System Settings Workspace page now has more granular tickmarks, so you can make the animations just a little bit faster or slower if you want (Alexandre Pereira, Plasma 5.19.0)
• TeamViewer , KeepassX , and Transmission now have nice monochrome system tray icons (Rocket Aaron and Wojciech Stachurski, Frameworks 5.69):
  

How You Can Help

In Plasma 5.19, we are making a push on our Breeze Theme Evolution work. It’s proceeding, but would go faster with your help! There are tons and tons of mockups in the linked task and its child tasks, and what we really need at this point is people willing to help implement them. QML skills are helpful, and C++ is also useful for the needed work on the Breeze theme itself. If this sounds interesting to you, don’t be shy, step right up! Head over to the VDG channel to find out how you can get involved and coordinate work.

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 .