Plasma/Plasma 6

Plasma 6 is built on top of Qt 6 and was released on February 28th, 2024. This page outlines important information and major changes coming in Plasma 6.

Known issues

On the KDE side:

Plasma 6 issues
Frameworks 6 issues + Plasma 6 issues
All Qt6-related issues across all KDE software
In a built-from-source dev session on top of a distro-provided Plasma 5 session, KWin effect IDs have changed, so they appear duplicated in the Effects KCM and you need to disable one of each, or else both play at the same thing and there are weird visual glitches.
In a built-from-source dev session on top of a distro-provided Plasma 5 session, Qt5-using QML apps don't launch because they'll try to use the KF6 Kirigami. Workaround: For those apps, create custom .desktop files with QML2_IMPORT_PATH set to the built-from-source KF5 location in the "Environment Variables" field, and an absolute path to to the built-from-source executable in the "Program" field. See also https://phabricator.kde.org/T16483.
In a built-from-source dev session on top of a distro-provided Plasma session (5 or 6), your dev session will still use the system versions of KAuth helpers by default. This can lead to issues when certain components such as PowerDevil make use of newly introduced helper actions. Use plasma-workspace MR !1715 to overlay your build on top of /usr, or !3705 for a partially successful symlinking approach.

Known upstream issues, no fix yet:

"Pick Screen Color" button missing in color picker dialog on Wayland
- https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479406
- https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-120957

Emoji Selector lags when changing categories
- https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478379
- https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-120007

All WebViews look crusty and bad on fractional scales
- https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-113574

Fixed upstream, but without a release yet:

Several things crash in QWaylandWindow::createDecoration
- https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479302 (Fixed in Qt 6.6.3)

Deleting network connections doesn't work
- https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=473012 (Fixed in Qt 6.7)

For built-from-source dev sessions, SDDM displays empty/incorrect session titles
- Fixed in SDDM 0.21.0

How to use/test it

Developers and adventurous users are encouraged to test or even live on Plasma 6, to help get it into a releasable state faster. Before doing so, remember the rules of Plasma 6:

Read through the list of major bugs and only use Plasma 6 in production if none of them is a deal-breaker for you. Maintain regular backups! This is mandatory.
When you encounter an issue in Plasma 6 that was not present in Plasma 5, check the list of issues to see if it's already been reported. If you don't find anything, submit a bug report and add the "qt6" keyword to it.
If you are technically able, try to fix issues you encounter yourself.

Options for testing Plasma 6 include the following:

Arch Linux As of 2-28-24 You must enable the extra-testing repo in your pacman.conf
Build from source
Fedora E.g. from https://openqa.fedoraproject.org/nightlies.html download and use "KDE live" and "Kinoite dvd-ostree".
Gentoo Linux
KaOS ISO
KaOS Install
KDE Neon Unstable ISO
Nix Flake
openSUSE Krypton At the last step (installation summary), select "Software" and tick "Plasma 6 Desktop Base".

If you're a distro packager reading this and your distro offers a Plasma 6 ISO/repo/etc, please add it to this list in alphabetical order!

Developer-facing changes

PlasmaComponents 2 has been removed. All usages should be changed to their PlasmaComponents 3 equivalents.
Widget API has changed, and all widgets need to be ported. See the Plasma 6 widget porting guide to learn how
Icons in Plasma styles are no longer honored; all icons now come from the systemwide icon theme. Plasma themes should migrate their icons to their companion icon themes, if they have one. For more information, read this.
Icons requested by name with the -symbolic suffix will now always return a symbolic icon if the icon theme has one. Icon themes with colorful and symbolic versions of icons should suffix the symbolic versions with -symbolic. For more information, read this.
The first page in Welcome Center can now be customized. See the README file at https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-welcome for details on how to do this.
The location on disk where Welcome Center finds custom pages has changed to /usr/share/plasma/plasma-welcome/extra-pages/.

Work that's been decided on but not implemented yet

Postponed to Plasma 6.1, in progress

Postponed to Plasma 6.1, not started yet

Packaging notes

This section is aimed at packagers/distributors for information about correctly packaging a KF6/Plasma 6 session. Please see:

User-facing changes

Plasma 6.0

New features

User interface changes

Changes to default settings

(i.e. all of these things can be changed back if you don't like them)

Removals

KHotKeys (which provides the "Custom Shortcuts" page in System Settings) - it was unmaintained for over 7 years and its core functionality overlapped the newer, maintained, and better supported KGlobalAccel system. The Mouse actions app may be usable as a replacement for KHotkeys' mouse gestures feature
The "Windowed widgets KRunner runner - it was confusing users into thinking that widgets (which are intentionally very small and limited) were apps
The "Grid", "Informative", "Small Icons", "Text Only", and "Thumbnails" Task Switchers - they were worse than other existing ones
The "Force Font DPI" setting on Wayland - the per-screen scaling system is now considered the only supported method of doing systemwide scaling
The ability to configure (some) icon sizes semi-systemwide - It didn't work in more places than it did work, and people were trying unsuccessfully to use it instead of more suitable methods of scaling the system
Per-Activity power settings - they were largely broken, increased code complexity of a fragile part of the system, and were and mostly possible to approximate using other settings
The Air theme - it was unmaintained and somewhat broken
Unsplash Picture of the Day provider - it stopped working after Unsplash revoked public API access due to abuse by AI data model training scrapers
"Save settings for only this specific display arrangement" feature in KScreen - it was too buggy and nearly impossible to fix
System Settings Icon view - having multiple navigation views for a settings app was just weird
Windows Shares KCM - It was hyper-specialized and did not work properly in a variety of cases
GUI support for the Synaptics touchpad drivers - driver unmaintained for years and has has not been recommended for a long time
GUI support for the Evdev mouse driver - removed to de-complicate backend logic since Libinput is required anyway and includes a better mouse driver
Quick Share widget - it was completely broken in Qt6, and even in the past when it was working better, it still never worked very well and suffered from multiple unfixable bugs
"Active screen follows mouse" setting - it caused confusion for users of multi-screen effects when the active window and cursor were on different screens; now the screen considered active is always the one with the active window on it
Touchpad widget - it did very little and was quite broken, and we were unable to make it work better in time for 6.0. It may return later, though

Plasma 6.1

Oops, forgot to do it. Someone fill this in!

Plasma 6.2

For digital artists

Color Management

More complete support for the Wayland color management protocol (too many MRs to link)
Turned on support for the Wayland color management protocol by default
Improved brightness handling for HDR and ICC profiles
Tone mapping
Significant performance improvements for HDR

Power management

Discover and system updating

Accessibility

Weather widget

Input device configuration

Networking

UI/visual design

Miscellaneous

Technical

Plasma 6.3

For digital artists

UI/visual design

Desktop icons

Widgets

Discover/system updating

Displays when an app is published by its developer, or verified by a trusted third party

Accessibility

visual indicator for latched and locked modifier keys