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

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
• Poor performance on weak integrated GPUs: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452119
• Sticky keys do not work: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444335
• Window shading does not work: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=377162
• Visual line glitches with certain fractional scale factors: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465158
• Blocking calls to XWayland can make KWin freeze: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=442846
• Mouse cursor can go 1 pixel beyond screen edges, which breaks Fitts' law for those screen edges and makes hover-enabled UI elements touching them flicker: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=461911

Plasma

• Saving and restoring activities does not work
• 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
• Global Menu is broken for GTK apps: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424485
• Can't drag-and-drop images from Firefox to the desktop: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=448867

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

Upstream issues, or KDE issues blocked by required upstream changes

• No color management: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439135; requires https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/14 and adoption in KWin
• 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)
• In multi-monitor setups with at least one scaled display, Context menus have items which are invisible until hovered: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-93380
• QDockWidget does not visually move when moving and is not re-dockable when detached: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-87332
• QMenus appear as standalone windows when opened using a stylus: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-111130

Quality-of-life issues caused by non-KDE software

• 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
• 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 are grouped together with Chrome windows in Icon-Only Task Manager: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=358277
• Multiple Chrome windows on different virtual desktops causes heavy stuttering/freezing in Chrome. Does not occur if the multiple windows are on the same virtual desktop. Similar bug report filed for Ubuntu/Gnome/Wayland here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xwayland/+bug/1906792
• Single-instance GTK applications aren't raised when trying to launch a second time: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5483

Fixed already in Qt 6 but not backportable nor backported to Qt 5

• plasmashell crashes when hovering or clicking items on the Panel due to "zwp_linux_buffer_params_v1.add" protocol error: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=447717; fixed in Qt 6.3
• 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
• When using a fractional scale factor, native Wayland apps are slightly blurry: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446674; fixed in Qt 6.6
• Changing scale causes Qt-based software to become blurry until restarted: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-78327; fixed in Qt 6.6
• Apps using QDesktopServices::openUrl()/Qt.openUrlExternally don't raise existing windows in the activated app: https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/321246 and https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtbase/+/447556; fixed in Qt 6.5