Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week was busy! We’ve got some great new features to share, improved theming compatibility, UI improvements, bug fixes… and lots more! This is one of those weeks with a bit of something for everyone ­— even people who are picky about software dependencies. Take a look:

Notable new features

Plasma 6.8

Spectacle now gives you the option to record audio during screen recordings! It can grab audio from the microphone, audio that the system is outputting, or both. (Khudoberdi Abdujalilov, KDE Bugzilla #474798)

System Monitor can now measure VRAM usage as a percentage of the total, just like it can for regular RAM. (Beck Thompson, ksystemstats MR #135)

The 13-month Ethiopian calendar joins the growing ranks of supported alternate calendars! (Eyobed Awel, kdeplasma-addons MR #1079)

Notable UI improvements

Plasma 6.6.6

Improved the responsiveness of the brightness slider in the Brightness & Color widget. (Marco Martin, powerdevil MR #650)

Plasma 6.7.3

The Vietnamese lunar calendar now displays its text in Vietnamese even if your system language is set to something else, which is more consistent with other alternate calendars. (Trần Nam Tuấn, KDE Bugzilla #521787)

The feature to show alternative characters when you press and hold a key on the keyboard now triggers after 600 milliseconds of holding, rather than 200. This should make it much harder to accidentally activate. (Kristen McWilliam, plasma-keyboard MR #157)

You can now interact with the Overview and Custom Tiling overlays using a drawing tablet stylus in a Wayland session. (Nicolas Fella, KDE Bugzilla #468396 and KDE Bugzilla #522677)

Plasma 6.8

Comboboxes in Plasma now use the active Plasma theme to style their popups, rather than using a hardcoded Breeze-style appearance. And their menu highlights no longer animate in and out, either, which matches the appearance everywhere else. (Filip Fila, libplasma MR #1547 and libplasma MR #1550)

System Settings’ Remote Desktop page no longer looks somewhere between “very awkward” and “broken” with a small and narrow window size, like on a phone. (Nick Haghiri, krdp MR #208)

System Settings’ “Report a Bug in the Current Page” feature now works for pages that didn’t come from KDE but still list a bug reporting URL. (Antti Savolainen, systemsettings MR #412)

Auto-login now works in Plasma Login Manager on operating systems with older versions of systemd, like KDE neon. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #522006)

Brightness on external monitors now changes more quickly after you adjust the brightness slider in the Brightness & Color widget. (Kylie CT, KDE Bugzilla #498913)

Frameworks 6.29

When using the default qqc2-desktop-style system (as opposed to when testing the upcoming Union system), list and grid view highlights in QML-based KDE software now respect the visual styling of the active app style, rather than having a hardcoded Breeze-style appearance. In addition, password fields no longer change in height for certain fonts when you type the first character into them. (Evgeniy Harchenko, qqc2-desktop-style MR #521 and qqc2-desktop-style MR #524)

The Breeze icon theme now includes an icon for Android app bundle files. (Tobias Zwick, KDE Bugzilla #508430)

The large fancy Kirigami tab bars seen in QML-based KDE software now switch the active tab when you scroll over them or press one of the standard tab-switching keyboard shortcuts — just like tab bars in QtWidgets-based apps do. (Tobias Ozór, kirigami MR #2123)

Notable bug fixes

Plasma 6.6.6

The Choose Application window no longer percent-encodes some characters in filenames, which looked pretty ugly. (David Redondo, KDE Bugzilla #521748)

The Media Frame widget no longer displays every other image in a somewhat sharpened and crunchy manner. (Marco Martin, KDE Bugzilla #521534)

Plasma 6.7.3

Fixed a recent regression that broke closing windows in the Overview overlay by middle-clicking them. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #522015)

Fixed a few remaining minor layout regressions in the Color Picker widget, so now it should always have the same size as it did in Plasma 6.6. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #522377)

Fixed a recent regression in an X11 session that made icons of all running Flatpak apps appear unnecessarily in the System Tray. (David Redondo, KDE Bugzilla #522864)

Plasma no longer crashes if you disable the Calendar Events plugin in one Digital Clock widget when there are more than one of them with that plugin enabled. (Shouvik Kar, KDE Bugzilla #520465)

When the system is configured to automatically switch global themes at certain times of day, this switchover now takes place as expected even if the computer happened to be turned off when the transition would have taken place. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #511740)

Plasma 6.8

Fixed a glitch related to scrolling in System Monitor’s Configure Columns popup, which is now a traditional window instead. (Arjen Hiemstra, KDE Bugzilla #517723)

In the Networks widget, connecting to a network you don’t have permission to edit no longer mistakenly makes all other available networks look connected. (Sergey Katunin, KDE Bugzilla #461028)

Frameworks 6.28

Fixed a subtle regression that prevented overriding settings set at the vendor/distro level (e.g. via a /etc/xdg/kwinrc file) that differed from Plasma’s own default settings. This affected Kubuntu and Fedora, which turned on Wobbly Windows and Plasma Keyboard, respectively. (Nicolas Fella, KDE Bugzilla #519481)

Typst documents once again show a fancy icon when using the Breeze icon theme, fixing an issue where this stopped happening after the official MIME type for Typst files was changed upstream of KDE. (Boris Jurcaga, breeze-icons MR #554)

Notable in performance & technical

Plasma 6.6.6

Using a udev rule to set the LIBINPUT_CALIBRATION_MATRIX property now works as expected in a Wayland session. (Nicolas Fella, KDE Bugzilla #521464)

Plasma 6.8

Spectacle no longer requires the fairly chunky OpenCV software library; we found a way to implement an adequately-performant blur effect without it. (Noah Davis, spectacle MR #561 and kquickimageeditor MR #53)

How you can help

KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.

Would you like to help put together this weekly report? Introduce yourself in the Matrix room and join the team!

Beyond that, you can help KDE by directly getting involved in any other projects. Donating time is actually more impactful than donating money. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist.

You can also help out by making a donation! This helps cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keeps KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get a new Plasma feature or a bug fix mentioned here

Push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-28.

Chat Control 1.0: EU Council forces messenger scans via fast-track

Tags: tech, europe, surveillance

This is a shady move once more… They really want to extend this security apparatus. We could hope there were enough MEPs to vote against this… but it’s not been the case.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Chat-Control-1-0-EU-Council-forces-messenger-scans-via-fast-track-11353659.html

You paid me, a long-time Linux user, to use Windows 11 exclusively for a month: here’s how it went

Tags: tech, windows, funny

Funny experiment. If you’re a Linux user pondering going back to Windows it’ll likely cure you. Goodness the install experience is abysmal and that’s just the beginning of the troubles. Of course it has a good side as well but it feels fairly limited.

https://www.osnews.com/story/145459/you-paid-me-a-long-time-linux-user-to-use-windows-11-exclusively-for-a-month-heres-how-it-went/

Democratizing Abandonware

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, slop, flatpak, codereview

The data set is rather small but the trend is really bad. So much reviewer time wasted due to AI slop… this time on the Flathub side.

https://geopjr.dev/blog/democratizing-abandonware

I am not a tool

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, ethics, foss

Really this kind of AI push is a bad move from employers, especially when interacting with FOSS communities so much. This forces people to pass the ethical issues onto volunteers…

https://eng.hroncok.cz/2026/07/07/ai-tool

Bosses Horrified as “AI Native” College Graduates Hit the Workplace

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, productivity, education

How is going this social experiment at scale? Not well I’d say… And some in those cohorts will end up in positions of power, that’s when it’ll become really “interesting” I guess.

https://futurism.com/future-society/college-critical-thinking-ai

Local, CPU-Friendly, High-Quality TTS with Kokoro

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, speech

This keeps being a very interesting TTS model. Looks like it’s getting simpler to deploy too.

https://ariya.io/2026/03/local-cpu-friendly-high-quality-tts-text-to-speech-with-kokoro/

Cpp2Rust: Automatic Translation of C++ to Safe Rust

Tags: tech, c++, rust, compiler

Still need some work I’d say but this is interesting research. Transpiling C++ to Rust is getting more accessible. It need some improvements on the optimisation side to be more generally usable.

https://web.ist.utl.pt/nuno.lopes/pubs/cpp2rust-pldi26.pdf

Physically Based - The PBR values database

Tags: tech, shader, pbr, physics

Cool resource to have the right values for various PBR materials.

https://physicallybased.info/

How I’m using CSS View Transitions on this blog

Tags: tech, html, css, animation

A good reminder that you can go a long way to specify transitions with just CSS nowadays.

https://blog.omgmog.net/post/how-im-using-css-view-transitions-on-this-blog/

Size does matter, actually

Tags: tech, web, performance, complexity

There are ways to have a lighter web. It leads to interesting techniques too.

https://nh3.dev/blog/05-bloat

98% isn’t very much

Tags: tech, reliability, statistics

Can you rely on something? Indeed, if it fails “only” 2% of the time it can mean a lot of failures… you better handle the edge cases and degrade gracefully.

https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2026/07/03/98-isnt-very-much/

a software engineering interview question I like: computing the median

Tags: tech, hr, interviews, complexity

I like this kind of questions as well. It’s more interesting to aim for something simple to start with than a puzzle. Even topics considered simple have several layers of complexity.

https://krisshamloo.com/blog/007

The Lion, The Witch, and the audacity of recruiters

Tags: tech, hr, interviews

Whatever the hiring process, show some respect to the candidate. It’s the least you can do for them.

https://hauleth.dev/post/the-lion-the-witch-and-the-aduacity-of-recruiter/

The myth of mind uploading

Tags: tech, scifi, science, philosophy

A long piece, but digs in details on why “mind uploading” really can’t be a thing.

https://plus.flux.community/p/the-myth-of-mind-uploading

Bye for now!

Friday, 10 July 2026

KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 6.28.0.

This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.

New in this version

Qt for MCUs 2.12.2 LTS has been released and is available for download. This patch release provides several bug fixes and other improvements while maintaining source compatibility with Qt for MCUs 2.12 (see Qt for MCUs 2.12 LTS released). This release does not add any new functionality however as part of a continuous effort to scale Qt for MCUs to more platforms new Tier-2 board Nuvoton Gerda-4L is now available. 

Hi everyone!! So we are halfway through our journey of GSOC 2026. It's time for the midterm and new status updates we have accomplished over the past 6 weeks.

• During my first and second weeks, I familiarized myself more with the XMPP protocols and clients like Kaidan, etc., which can be used for XMPP server interactions and also created a page for the Mankala Engine using Hugo. I have successfully added the option to register XMPP accounts from within the Mankala Engine and also added an XMPP compliance check in the 2nd week, which makes sure that the selected XMPP server has all the protocols that are needed to play the game.

• For the next tasks in week 3, I worked on extracting usernames and profile player icons from within the XMPP servers and directly display it as part of the user account in the game. I also fixed the sizes for the different components in the profile page and gave it a proper redesign.

• For weeks 4 and 5, I spent time creating the tournaments. I experimented a bit with the connectivity to connect more than 2 players to an XMPP server, and then created a detailed tournament page for the number of wins, losses, and player match details, and thus implemented the round-robin tournament style. Some more features, like setting up the time limits for each move and accepting game invites, were also added.

• In the 6th week, I gave a talk at the ILUGC (Indian Linux Users Group Chennai) virtual meet and got feedback from the players, and implemented better sounds and a sound button for the game. I also added animations for the shells so they get smoothly displaced to their destined pits after each move.

Challenges I faced

The most difficult part while implementing tournaments can be said to connect multiple players and track their moves in real time across the games. The best possible way to fix this was to create a XMPP MUC and then join the player using that and track the moves being sent across the channel. So, for example a move played by Player 1 will be sent to Player 2, to do this we send the request from Player 1's account track the request through the MUC and display it on the Players 2's board and same goes for multiple players present in the game.

Goals for upcoming weeks

A couple of changes were added based on our GSOC proposal, and a lot of new things and features were implemented. In the next half of GSOC, I plan to work on text- and voice-based chat options within the Mankala so that players can communicate with others during their matches. I also plan to add another variant of tournaments, which gives the players a broader number of options to choose from, and add the feature to create a user-defined AI to play against another person or an AI over the network.

Thanks for reading 🚀

This week I implemented clipboard auto-clear for KeepSecret (!36).

When a user copies a password, it shouldn't stay in the clipboard indefinitely — that's a real security risk if the clipboard gets inspected, synced, or accessed by another application.

What was implemented:

After copying a password, the clipboard is automatically cleared after 30 seconds. A Kirigami.InlineMessage countdown notification appears in the entry page showing "Password copied. Clipboard will be cleared in X seconds", updating every second. The clipboard is also cleared when the app quits via QCoreApplication::aboutToQuit. Instead of QClipboard::clear() (which on X11 reverts to the previous clipboard entry), the clipboard is overwritten with an empty string. A single repeating QTimer of 1 second handles both the countdown and the clear — subtracting 1 second each tick, stopping and clearing when it reaches 0. The timeout uses std::chrono::seconds as suggested by Marco Martin during review.

Klipper history protection:

One tricky KDE-specific problem: even if you clear the clipboard after the timeout, the password could still be sitting in Klipper's clipboard history. The fix is to add the x-kde-passwordManagerHint MIME type (set to "secret") alongside the password data when copying. Klipper specifically checks for this hint and skips adding that entry to its history entirely — so the password never gets recorded there in the first place. This approach was pioneered by KeePassXC.

Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 6, versioned 6.6.6.

Plasma 6.6 was released in February 2026 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

This release adds two months’ worth of new translations and fixes from KDE’s contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include:

Ok, the title is slightly click-baity but hear me out.

So nearly 2 weeks ago, after writing a lot of code for making the font subsetting work for annotations, I found a flaw in my approach.

I was never deleting the old original font after embedding it's subset version.

So what happened is that:

• Suppose a user creates a new annotation in an empty PDF.
• The subsetted font gets embedded and used in the PDF.
• But the original font stays there, taking space.

This is actually slightly worse than when we had no subsetting at all.

So the solution should just be to delete the original font right? Nope

If we simply delete the original font, it would create the following problem:

• Suppose a PDF with two annotations pointing / using the same font.
• User edits the 1st annotation.
• 1st annotation uses the subset font, and the old font gets deleted from the PDF.
• The 2nd annotation is rendered useless.

When I realized this, I thought I would need to completely change how I do subsetting, and almost all the code I had written will go to waste.

My new idea was to never let the full version of a font to exist inside the PDF. What I mean is subsetting immediately when the font is loaded from the disk and is about to be embedded as a Font object.

But I had a meeting with my mentor Albert Astals Cid yesterday, and we decided to settle on a simpler approach. We can simply detect if the font we want to delete is:- a font we added ourselves or a pre-existing font inside the PDF.

If we added it ourselves, we can safely remove it. Otherwise, let it stay there as it might be in use by other annotations.

I implemented it today, and we have working font subsetting for freetext annotations right now (not merged).
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/merge_requests/2220

A simple size experiment

Here's a simple experiment which demonstrates the impact of font subsetting on PDF file size:

Original file size: 105820 bytes = 105.82 KB

After adding an annotation with content "hello world":

Poppler without font subsetting: 504699 bytes = 504.699 KB

Poppler with font subsetting: 145806 bytes = 145.806 KB

That's like a 500% improvement...

What's next

• Right now, I only do the subsetting for ttf/otf fonts and not for ttc fonts. I need to do that.
• I need to make the subsetting work for forms as well.

Thank You

Good Night!