Plasma/Wayland Known Significant Issues

This page tracks the "Errata/Known issues" that are specific to the the Plasma Wayland session: significant quality-of-life annoyances, significant problems with workarounds, etc. This is part of KDE's Wayland goal.

It is the Wayland-specific companion to Plasma/X11 Known Significant Issues.

KWin/compositing/window management

• Worse performance on external monitor connected to NVIDIA GPU when default GPU is Intel: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452219
• Native Wayland windows cannot save and restore their window positions; KWin would need to do it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15329
• "Spare Layouts" feature not implemented: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455431
• Using key combination shortcuts to type phrases into windows is not yet implemented: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478219
• With NVIDIA GPU, transient graphical glitches after changing themes: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=470503

Accessibility

• Can't move pointer with numpad keys: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478620
• Slow Keys feature doesn't work: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=490826
• Only Maliit is supported, which is not a proper accessibility-oriented virtual keyboard (e.g. no modifier keys or arrow keys)

Graphics Tablet Support

• Can't switch between absolute and relative modes for the graphic tablet. Bug report and Pending Merge Requests 1 and 2.
• Can't create multiple profiles for tablet configurations so artists can choose different profiles (e.g. different shortcuts and pen pressure) for different workflows like inking a comic or doing vector art: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477671
• Can't map a portion of the tablet area to the screen. Some people have large tablet and sometime they want to map a portion of the tablet to the monitor: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=457703.
• The UI for mapping tablet area and its buttons has a few issues compared to the UI in the X11 KCM: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477750
• Graphic tablets may have a touch strip or ring, but in the Wayland KCM, you can't assign shortcuts to touch rings. Bug report: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477752
• Some tablets allow users to switch between touch ring modes. For example, you can click a button and change the mode from one set of shortcuts like scrolling to another set of shortcuts, like changing hue or zooming in and out. This is not possible on Plasma Wayland: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477787

Upstream

Waiting on new Wayland protocol

• No session restore for native Wayland windows: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436318. Our session management recovery engine is based on the X Session Management Protocol and there is apparently currently no generic concept to do it on Wayland. But on Qt it's plugin-able and GNOME has had their own implementation for some time. Possible workaround: Use Hibernation (Suspend To Disk) instead.
• Picture-in-Picture windows from web browsers get a Task Manager icon and do not stay on top: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=463288; requires https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/132 and adoption in apps using PiP windows (like web browsers)
• Graphics programs that require color accuracy in professional settings such as Krita, GIMP, Scribus, Darktable, Blender, DaVinci Resolve, etc. cannot guarantee accuracy, especially when moving between color spaces like sRGB and CMYK (from digital to print) or Rec. 709 (broadcast TV) until the Color Management and HDR protocol is merged and compositors like KWin implement support for it: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/14
• Calibration/Profiling tools like DisplayCAL and argyllcms are used with colorimeters to ensure monitors are displaying color accurately. A portal (which has not been proposed yet) is required for these tools to be able to calibrate the monitor on Wayland and hand the ICC profile over to the compositor as discussed here. Relevant DisplayCAL issue here: https://github.com/eoyilmaz/displaycal-py3/issues/133
• Global Menu is not supported for non-Qt apps: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424485. Needed wayland protocol: see https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/52

Not yet started

• With screen scaling, cursor size is incorrect when hovering over native Wayland apps written with the GTK toolkit due to its lack of support for the cursor-shape-v1 protocol: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=451158. See also https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=459161 for general cursor size issues.
• With a high DPI mouse, some applications might experience unresponsiveness: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=450139

Work in progress

• When the compositor crashes or restarts, non-Qt apps are killed — Qt apps do stay alive, and work is ongoing to make other apps survive as well; see see https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/wikis/Restarting
• QtQuick windows exhibit jittery resizing: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477900 - https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/503676 (Work in progress)

Fixed in an upcoming version

• Can't fine tune pressure curve of the tablet. Various people draw with varying pressure; some people draw with heavy hand some use light touch. Configuring pressure curve helps artists to get better lines. Bug report and Merge Request. - Implemented in Plasma 6.3.0
• When using a Chromium-based browser in native Wayland mode, dragging an image to the desktop creates a sticky note out of it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449645 / https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/518017 (Fixed in Qt 6.6) + https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/518018 (Fixed in Qt 6.8.2)