This Week in KDE: Plasma 5.20 features start landing

In addition to a ton of bugfixes for Plasma 5.19 which we just released , this week we started to land big improvements for Plasma 5.20. Take a look:

New Features

It’s now possible to independently configure the file size cut-off for displaying previews for local and remote files in Dolphin (Gastón Haro, Dolphin 20.08.0):

It’s now possible to tile a window to a corner by quickly invoking two edge tiling shortcuts within one second ; for example by hitting Meta+Right arrow and Meta+up arrow one after another, the window will be tiled to the top-right corner (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

You can now middle-click on the System Tray Notifications icon to enter and exit Do Not Disturb mode (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.20)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

The drawing tools in Okular’s presentation mode toolbar are no longer blurry when using a high DPI screen (David Hurka, Okular 1.10.3)

Yakuake’s main window no longer appears under a top panel on Wayland (Tranter Madi, Yakuake 20.08.0)

Fixed a bug that could prevent Yakuake from opening when using a dual-monitor setup with a single vertical panel on a screen edge close to the center of the full desktop (Maximillian Schiller, Yakuake 20.08.0)

Kate’s “Open Recent” menu now displays documents opened in Kate from the command line and other sources as well, not just the ones opened using the file dialog (Chrostoph Cullmann, Kate 20.08.0)

Fixed a common crash in Qt applications when quitting (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.19.0)

Disconnected Wi-Fi networks now display the correct security type (Jan Grulich, Plasma 5.19.1

The Bluetooth system tray applet’s tooltip no longer shows the name of the wrong device (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.1)

Fixed a bug causing high CPU usage when scrolling through the list of rules in the new Window Rules System Settings page (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.19.1)

Rows in the System Tray popup are now centered vertically in a correct manner (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.19.1)

Right-clicking on pinned apps to run their app-specific options (e.g. to open a private browsing window in Firefox or Chrome) now works properly when the action includes command-line arguments (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.19.1)

When you search for an application in the Kickoff Application Launcher and then right-click on the search result, the “Edit Application…” menu item now works (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.19.1)

Various apps whose .desktop files specify the icon as a full path to an SVG file now display those icons correctly in the Kicker, Kickoff, and Application Dashboard launchers (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.19.1)

The activities database now has backup and self-repair mechanisms , which should reduce (if not eliminate) the occurrences of favorites and recent items being corrupted or forgotten (Ivan Čukić, Plasma 5.20.0)

Recent documents accessed in private Activities are no longer visible in KRunner search results accessed from other Activities (Méven Car, Plasma 5.20.0)

Fixed an issue preventing the new header appearance from working properly when using the Breeze Dark plasma theme (Chris Holland, Frameworks 5.71)

Content can no longer overflow in the grid items in the new “Get New [thing]” windows (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.72)

When using a dark color scheme, the new “Get new [thing]” windows no longer display white squares in the center of each grid item before the preview image loads (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.72)

The Baloo file indexer no longer skips indexing the filenames of files with a blacklisted MIME type (i.e. those whose contents are not useful to index); it will now always index filenames, but only perform full content indexing for files whose content makes sense to index . This should make it better overall at finding files but use hardly any more resources in the process (Stefan Brüns, Frameworks 5.72)

User Interface Improvements

The default Plasma layout has been changed to replace the Task manager with an Icons-Only Task manager with some apps pinned to it by default, on a thickened panel . This should provide a more familiar and modern layout with greater touch-friendliness by default. Remember that you can always change back if you don’t like it (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

The panel’s thickness is now easier to adjust: you can use a spinbox to enter a numerical size or fine-tune the side with plus and minus buttons, and you can still drag on it to adjust the size in a very coarse way, as before (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20):

The System Tray’s expanded view of hidden items now uses a grid instead of a list, which makes it much more touch friendly and fixes a few bugs (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20.0):

Task switchers now have shadows on Wayland , as expected (Vlad Zahorodnii, Frameworks 5.72)

How You Can Help

Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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 .