Friday, 4 September 2026
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
Some of the last Plasma 6.8 features landed this week, and there’s a whole bunch of great stuff! Let’s jump right in:
Notable new features
Plasma 6.8
We’ve implemented something very much like the “Autoscroll” feature on windows, whereby you press the middle mouse button to enter a dedicated scrolling mode, and then move the pointer to scroll. This feature already existed for when you pressed and held the middle button, but now there’s an option to enable and disable this mode as an on/off toggle by pressing the button normally. (Uriel Fontan, KDE Bugzilla #495617)
Speaking of clicking… Plasma now features a built-in “dwell clicker” feature! This is an accessibility tool that automatically clicks whenever the pointer is moved somewhere and then left alone for a moment — and what constitutes a “moment” is configurable, of course. It works really well. You can learn a bit more about it on Sebastian’s blog. (Sebastian Sauer, KDE Bugzilla #521391)
Plasma’s ever-growing list of alternate calendar layouts now includes the Bikram Sambat calendar used in Nepal and parts of India. (Satya Prakash Dahal, KDE Bugzilla #500298)

There’s now a new remote desktop mode that locks the remote computer’s physical screens upon connection, and shows a newly-created virtual screen to the user who is connecting. (David Edmundson, krdp MR #230)

Screen readers can now ask KWin what window is under the pointer. (Nicolas Fella, kwin MR #9825)
Union styles now appear on System Settings’ Application Styles page! This will make it easier to use and test them, and you can also import them from files, too. (Arjen Hiemstra, plasma-workspace MR #6970)

Notable UI improvements
Plasma 6.8
You can now disable a screen or other output only when this is actually supported. (David Edmundson, kscreen MR #512)
The mouse keys acceleration spinbox no longer claims it’s showing milliseconds, because it isn’t! (Nicolas Fella, plasma-desktop MR #2854)
When you resize the Display Configuration widget, the buttons within it resize smoothly, not jerkily. (Michal Malinowski, kscreen MR #513)
The off-by-default feature to show tooltip thumbnails when clicking on a grouped Task Manager Task (kind of like how Windows does it) now works in a more natural-feeling way. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #484206)
KDE Gear 26.12.0
The expander arrow for notifications in KDE Connect’s widget now points in the correct direction in all states, including when using a right-to-left language. (Ely Golden and Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #524889)
Notable bug fixes
Plasma 6.6.7
Fixed an issue that could make the Maliit on-screen keyboard crash at seemingly-random times. (Sebastian Müller, kwin MR #9818)
If a Plasma Vault with the “Go offline while this vault is open” feature is left open when the system shuts down, networking is now restored on the next login as expected. (Just Karol, KDE Bugzilla #457680)
Clicking on a link in a notification no longer also invokes the notification’s default action. (Kai Uwe Broulik, plasma-workspace MR #7003)
Plasma 6.7.5
Fixed a somewhat common way that KDE’s background daemon could crash when connecting to a Wi-Fi network or creating a hotspot. (Mickaël Thomas, KDE Bugzilla #522489)
Fixed a somewhat common way that Plasma could crash while shutting down or restarting when there was a Weather Report widget in the panel. (Bohdan Onofriichuk, KDE Bugzilla #524929)
Discover no longer fails to check for updates on operating systems that integrate the fwupd firmware updater system into Discover, but where its background process quits early while Discover is still running. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #521682)
Task Manager tasks’ progress bars now work as expected when using a right-to-left language. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #524112)
Fixed a recent regression in Discover that made it show a banner about updates requiring a restart for too many types of updates. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, discover MR #1404)
Fixed a bug that made scrolling through Alt+Tab items with a mouse wheel only work in one direction. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #522229)
Apps that resize their windows immediately after launching are now still positioned correctly according to the “Centered” window placement mode. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #525036)
Fixed some visual glitches in the Eye On Screen effect. (Sudip Datta, KDE Bugzilla #481100)
Fixed the Apply and Help buttons in the Clipboard settings window not working always, or at all, respectively. (Tomáš Hnyk, KDE Bugzilla #485460 and plasma-workspace MR #6992)
Plasma 6.8
Apps or the user can no longer crash KWin by sending malformed shortcut assignment requests over D-Bus. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #524700)
On System Settings’ Power Management page, the spinboxes used to configure charge limits now work properly when you type numbers into them. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #505071)
Notable in performance & technical
Plasma 6.7.5
Changing your system languages now sends the same data correctly to Flatpak apps, so they can more reliably display the languages you asked for. (Harald Sitter, plasma-workspace MR #6883)
Plasma 6.8
Screen recordings made by Spectacle and any other app using the KPipeWire library are now higher in quality. (Sergey Katunin, kpipwire MR #278)
Reduced the amount of VRAM that Plasma’s Breeze theme requires by optimizing some of its SVG assets. (Méven Car, libplasma MR #1567)
How you can help
KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.
Would you like to help put together this weekly report? Introduce yourself in the Matrix room and join the team!
Beyond that, you can help KDE by directly getting involved in any other projects. Donating time is actually more impactful than donating money. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist.
You can also help out by making a donation! This helps cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keeps KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
To get a new Plasma feature or a bug fix mentioned here
Push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.








