Plasma/Wayland Known Significant Issues

This page tracks the Wayland showstoppers throughout the stack. Showstoppers are major bugs, or missing features affecting the Wayland session but not the X11 session. This is part of KDE's Wayland goal.

Login/Session management

• Applications don't prompt to save unsaved work, causing data loss: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=461176
• Session restoring does not include Wayland native windows: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436318. Our sessions management recover 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.
• Windows that *are* session-restored go on the wrong virtual desktops: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421870
• Session-ending actions don't work after kwin_wayland had to restart for any reason: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449948

KWin/compositing/window management

• When the compositor crashes or restarts, all apps are killed — work is ongoing to fix this, see https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/wikis/Restarting
• In multi-monitor setups with at least one scaled display, Plasma context menus have items which are invisible until hovered: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=432264
• Task Manager window thumbnails are sometimes all black: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455021
• Poor performance on weak integrated GPUs: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452119
• Blur glitches with GPUs that don't support hardware cursors: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455526
• Sticky keys do not work: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444335
• Monitor connector names are different across X11 and Wayland, so logging into a Wayland session from X11 breaks Plasma containment configs: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365865
• Activation issues in KDE apps: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=460318

Plasma

• Saving and restoring activities does not work
• Monitor connector names are different across X11 and Wayland, so logging into a Wayland session from X11 breaks Plasma containment configs: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=385135
• When using scaling, logging into Wayland session after X11 session resets scale to 1: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433460
• XEmbedSNIProxy window eats input in top-left pixel of the screen: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433079
• Doesn't respect cursor theme at all: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454616
• Phantom non-interactive desktop icons sometimes appear: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=453937
• Global Menu is broken for GTK apps: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424485
• plasmashell starts lagging after any file is copied from dolphin and dolphin is closed https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454379

System Settings

• Gamma KCM doesn't work/isn't visible: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439135 & https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/issues/11

Blocked on required upstream changes

• When using a fractional scale factor, native Wayland apps are slightly blurry: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446674; requires https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/issues/34
• No color management: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439135; requires https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/14
• Picture-in-Picture windows from web browsers do not stay on top: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/issues/44
• QDockWidget does not visually move when moving and is not re-dockable when detached: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-87332

Quality-of-life issues caused by 3rd-party apps

• KDE app windows activated by Electron apps don't get brought forward due to lack of support for the Activation protocol in the toolkit: https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/30912
• Firefox windows activated by KDE apps don't get brought forward due to lack of support for the Activation protocol: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1767546
• In native Wayland mode, Firefox has an invisible animation that forces the screen to constantly repaint, spiking kwin_wayland's CPU use: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1754810. Workaround: set 'widget.wayland.vsync.enabled' to 'false' on its about:config page
• Installed Chrome apps do not show up as a unique app but instead assume the Chrome icon, in Icon-Only Task Manager: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=358277

Fixed already in Qt 6 but not backportable or backported to Qt 5

• KDE app windows don't get brought forward when activated by another KDE app: https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/321246; fixed in Qt 6.2
• Wrong positioning of context menu in multiple screens: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436016 / https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-85297; fixed in Qt 6.4