Plasma/Plasma 6

Plasma 6 is built on top of Qt 6 and is tentatively planned to be released in late 2023 or early 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 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 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.

On the Qt side:

• System Settings crashes nearly constantly when switching pages
  • https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-112306
  • Fixed in Qt 6.5.3

• On Wayland, with scaling, QML windows have content drawn at the wrong scale until manually resized
  • https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtdeclarative/+/447075
  • Fixed in Qt 6.5.3

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:

• Only use in production for purposes of developing Plasma 6 itself. Maintain regular backups!
• 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:

• Build from source
• Fedora KDE - Discussion in #kde:fedoraproject.org on Matrix
• KaOS ISO
• KaOS Install
• KDE Neon Unstable ISO

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

• Widget API has changed and all widgets need to be ported. See the Plasma 6 widget porting guide to learn how.
• On Wayland, Plasma panels, sidebars, KRunner, and Yakuake are now positioned using the layer-shell protocol.

User-facing changes

Additions

• Basic opt-in HDR support
• More types of default apps can be chosen
• Islamic calendar support
• Conversion between time zones in KRunner
• Power profiles OSD

Changes to default settings

• "Thumbnail Grid" is the new default Task Switcher style. Plasma 5's default "Breeze" Task Switcher has been renamed to "Sidebar."
• Use "Clicking in scrollbar track: Scrolls to the clicked location" setting by default
• Scrolling on the desktop no longer switches virtual desktops

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 "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
• 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

Work that's been decided on but not implemented yet

• Make double-click the default setting
• Bring SDDM into KDE
• Make the Wayland session the default one
• Make window titlebars (slightly) accent colored by default
• Use Floating panel by default
• Consolidate desktop folder layouts
• Change the release schedule to two per year
• Remove the concept of icons in Plasma themes
• Remove the ability to configure (some) icon sizes systemwide
• Remove the "Disable (Some Plasma) Tooltips" setting
• Remove System Settings Icon view
• Remove some redundant and confusing Notification settings