The KDE team has released its weekly update on the work done this week, and unlike previous weeks, it does not contain many new features. The team instead focused on improving things like UI, performance, and, as always, bug fixes.
Let"s start with Frameworks 6.18, which is expected next month. KDE is making a big change by dropping all the colorful third-party app icons from its Breeze icon theme. The team reasoned that overriding another developer"s branding is rude, and it also lacks the resources to maintain the icons as branding changes over time. Anyone who misses the old look is welcome to create a new icon theme and upload it to the KDE Store.
Plasma"s job tracker will now automatically inhibit sleep and screen locking for any registered task, making it an opt-out feature instead of opt-in. Kirigami-based apps will also see several performance and memory usage improvements.
Moving on to Plasma desktop, the upcoming version 6.5 will show a system notification by default when you plug in a device. KDE claims this change improves accessibility and helps with troubleshooting. Before anyone complains, the developers have worked to make these notifications less annoying, and you can disable them entirely if you prefer only sounds or no feedback at all.
The update will also reduce the Ocean sound theme"s volume change feedback sound because it was harsh and clipped at high volumes.
Other notable UI improvements for Plasma 6.5.0 include better accessibility for the Flatpak Permissions page and a small change to how you see information when you head to the "About" pages for widgets.
As for the bug fixes Plasma 6.5 will address, switching to global themes will now immediately re-color your KDE applications. The blur effect used to flicker a little bit when maximizing a window, but that has been fixed. A similar fix addresses the noise texture in the blur effect, which no longer moves in the wrong direction when you move a window.
Also, the bouncy app launch feedback animation will no longer get stuck after an app"s window appears. Lastly, the GNOME Terminal app now gets the correct background color with the Breeze GTK theme.
Plasma 6.4.5, the fifth bugfix release for Plasma 6.4, will arrive soon with its own set of fixes. The team corrected selection highlights in System Settings" Region & Language page, where text had the wrong color when an item was selected.
A fix was also backported to Spectacle on X11, preventing its own menus from appearing in screenshots. And if you"re on an Intel CPU from the Tiger Lake family or newer, a performance problem that caused KWin to lag when changing screen brightness has been resolved.
Here"s the rest of the bug fixes:
- Fixed an issue that could cause the ksgrd_network_helper process to linger and delay system shutdown.
- Fixed a bug that generated duplicate entries for widgets on the Shortcuts page over time.
- Corrected an issue where the DDC/CI screen brightness control would reactivate itself.
- NVIDIA GPUs now display their correct names on the "About This System" page.
- The Kicker Application Menu will now show search results even if you have no favorite apps.
- The "Open in File Manager" button for cameras now works as expected.
KDE Gear 25.12.0 will bring a useful improvement for Wayland users. Konsole and Kate will be able to pass Wayland activation tokens to each other, so when you run a command in Konsole to open a file in Kate, the existing Kate window will be raised correctly.