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

System Settings crashes when quitting
- https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=470598
- 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

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.
On Wayland, Plasma panels, sidebars, KRunner, and Yakuake are now positioned using the layer-shell protocol.

User-facing changes

New features

User interface changes

Changes to default settings

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
"Windows go above" and "Windows go below" Panel visibility modes - lost for technical reasons, not as a result of an intentional design decision; may return if we can find a way to support these features on Wayland with the layer-shell protocol