Firstly, thank you to the entire community and mentors for selecting my proposal for GSOC. Congratulations to all others 🎉

Goals for GSOC

Starting with the goals for ManakalaNextGen, the GUI of Mankala Engine, the main goal is to implement a tournament system for the game. I plan to start with improving the user registrations by giving users the option to create an XMPP account directly from within the game. We can have a minimum of 3 servers, which the game can support. Based on this, we can also have possible player icons and in-game names for the players, which would be displayed in matches.

Now, coming to the important part for tournaments, my aim is to create a new page for the tournament host and the participants. In that host specifies the game variant like Bohnenspiel, Oware, etc., and also the amount of time each game should run. The participants need to join the game using the room code given by the host. At last, we implement the logic for player elimination and create a leaderboard ranking the players based on their position.

Our main concern?

Yes, the game data might get lost. We need to come up with suitable solutions to export it and make sure that even if a player leaves the game, the game data is not lost and isn't declared invalid.

So, to summarize this, here are the main goals:

1. Add XMPP server registration option for players and update the registration page.
2. Create tournaments and logic for player elimination and ranking.
3. Make other necessary changes based on feedback.

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to a productive summer 🌞

Welcome to another edition of “This month in KDE Linux”!

Infrastructure remained a major focus this month, with multiple outages and bugs in Arch’s package archive leading to Harald Sitter creating a local mirror for KDE Linux. This substantially increased build delivery reliability.

Harald also worked on improving the speed of delta updates. This is experimental and in-progress, so you have to opt in; See the bottom of https://community.kde.org/KDE_Linux/Delta#Status

Beyond that, a number of features are under development but did not quite complete yet, so expect to hear about them next month.

This month, Hadi introduced a terminal handler to prompt you to add execute permissions to scripts lacking it when you try to run them:

Hadi also moved our console handling to the newer userspace Kmscon software, which we’re using in place of the built-in console from the Linux kernel. Text looks way better now!

Thomas Duckworth implemented screen reader support for the installer.

Jonas Harer and Daniele Me made the default zsh config even better. It really is a joy to use now!

Aidan turned on IPv6 privacy addressing by default, improving privacy a bit when using IPv6 connections.

I made KDE’s ksshaskpass dialog be the thing that prompts you for the password to unlock your encrypted ssh keys, which also allows you to have it save them in the system’s password storage system if you’d like. I also simplified the process of setting up an ssh agent to automatically add your keys, and documented how to flip the final switch to turn it all on.

I also documented how to persistently change kernel parameters, in case you need some extra ones (for example, turning on the experimental Xe driver for your newer Intel GPU).

Finally, I flipped the switch to have KDE Linux use the new Union theming system by default for QML apps. If the results in non-Flatpak QML apps like Discover, System Settings, Info Center, and Emoji Picker look no different… that’s perfect!

That’s all for April, folks! I’ll see everyone for the May report, or ideally, sooner. Because, as you can see, while KDE Linux is being developed by multiple people (good for project health), the number of changes is a bit low (bad for project velocity). There’s plenty to do, so if you’re a fan of the project, please help out:

• If you’re an adventurous and technical person, install KDE Linux and report issues.
• If you’re good at writing, KDE Linux’s documentation can always use improvement. Submit merge requests here.
• KDE Linux leans heavily on Flatpak, so fixing packaging or code issues in Flatpak-packaged apps is very helpful.
• You can even help us build the OS itself! The Beta milestone is currently 73% complete, and there’s plenty to do.
• The Incus-based Kapsule system is integral to our “expansion by experts” story. If you’re a container expert or low-level OS nerd, working on the child tasks here is hugely impactful

And if you’re already using KDE Linux, let us know how your experience has been! Is it good? What can we do better?

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week Plasma 6.7 entered its “soft feature freeze” where we stop merging newly-written features and focus on finishing up and merging the ones that were already in flight.

As such, some nice new features that have been in development for quite some time were merged this week!

In addition, Plasma got a number of nice quality-of-life UI improvements and some accessibility fixes, among other changes. A good haul this week:

Notable new features

Plasma 6.7

Implemented support for the “Background apps” portal. This allows apps (especially newer GNOME apps) that use this portal to put themselves in the background and appear as icons in the System Tray, alongside the similar icons for other apps that use the existing System Tray icon functionality. (David Redondo, plasma-workspace MR #5703)

Implemented an up-scaling feature for screen content when using KWin’s Zoom effect. The filter does its best to sharpen and upscale content, resulting in a smoother and less blocky appearance, especially at relatively high zoom levels. If this effect isn’t for you, you can turn it off. (Ritchie Frodomar, KDE Bugzilla #509770)

Medium magnification

High magnification

Massive magnification

The Printers widget is now badged with the number of active and queued print jobs. (Mike Noe, print-manager MR #323)

Notable UI improvements

Plasma 6.7

XWayland-using software that asks to be able to send synthetic keyboard and mouse events (such as xdotool, which it turns out a bunch of apps invoke) is now identified by name so you know what’s asking. In addition, you can see a list of apps you’ve given this permission to, and revoke it later. (David Redondo, kwin MR #9123)

Implemented some KDE styling to the generic MessageDialog component from Qt, which resolves the issue of these dialogs looking really ugly and out of place in various pieces of software, including the Sticky Note widget’s deletion confirmation dialog. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #499562)

After

Before

Improved how Discover handles being launched with no internet connection. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #511002)

Improved how Discover communicates that a firmware update has been queued for installation after the next restart. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #422498)

Removed the “double back button” effect visible in the Networks widget when showing a network’s QR code. (Tobias Fella, plasma-nm MR #541)

Made the automatic screen brightness feature take into account more data points, hopefully making it more responsive to your desires and less swingy when in an environment where the background lighting is changing a lot. (Prajna Sariputra, kwin MR #9145)

Made the buttons at the top of the Widget Explorer sidebar respect Fitts’ Law, allowing you to activate them by jamming the pointer against the adjacent screen edge and clicking. (Tobias Fella, plasma-desktop MR #3511 and libplasma MR #1479)

Streamlined the presentation of the notification about your KDE-Connect-connected phone being low on battery power. (Kai Uwe Broulik, powerdevil MR #619)

You now have more than 25 seconds to pick a color once you’ve invoked this from the Color Picker widget. Now you can take as long as you like. (Kai Uwe Broulik, kdeplasma-addons MR #1013)

Frameworks 6.26

Improved the appearance of the cross-fade transition when moving between pages in many Kirigami-based apps. (HeCheng Yu, kirigami MR #2079)

Notable bug fixes

Plasma 6.6.5

Fixed an issue that made Plasma Login Manager fail to launch properly on certain devices with certain graphics hardware — in particular Apple silicon laptops. (Matthias Kurz, plasma-login-manager MR #130)

Fixed an issue that made touches on a touchscreen stop applying to the correct part of the screen when the touchscreen was mirrored to another screen with different geometry. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #514688)

Made it possible to select a sound theme using the keyboard. (Nicolas Fella, KDE Bugzilla #519194)

Fixed a visual glitch on System Settings’ Drawing Tablet page that made the lines indicating mappings for stylus buttons fly off the top-left corner of the window with certain tablets. (David Redondo, KDE Bugzilla #519600)

Plasma 6.7

Fixed a case where KWin could crash when activating an item on a hidden panel while using the in-development Vulkan rendering backend. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #518721)

Fixed two cases of controls on System Settings’ Quick Settings page not being read by the Orca screen reader. (Nicolas Fella, KDE Bugzilla #519433)

Disabling KRunner plugins globally now turns them off in the Kicker Application Menu widget, too. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #501200)

Notable in performance & technical

Plasma 6.6.5

Fixed some performance issues experienced on a variety of NVIDIA GPUs that were introduced by version 595 of the proprietary NVIDIA driver. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #517987)

Plasma 6.7

Implemented support for renaming or relocating the new cross-desktop standard “Projects” folder that’s started to appear in people’s home folders. (Jakob Dev, plasma-desktop MR #3657)

Implemented version 2 of the “Input Capture” portal. (David Redondo, xdg-desktop-portal-kde MR #493)

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.

Recently a new submodule has landed in Kirigami: “Forms”.

Until this point, Kirigami had only offered the classic “FormLayout” component. which is used for configuration pages throughoug systemsettings, Plasma, and some apps. It’s the classical form used in desktop toolkits for decades:

This is a fairly clean layout which however is starting to slowly become outdated, as modern toolkits are starting to use a different layout nowdays, based on “cards”

Unfortunately FormLayout very bound to the classic layout, and it wasn’t really possible to adapt it to the new look in a compatible way which didn’t break existing applications in unexpected ways.

This is also the reason a new approach was done provided by kirigami addons: “FormCard”, which is used by a lot of applications; for instance here in NeoChat:

We wanted to have this new style of forms in the base Kirigami API, so after a review of the existing FormCard, we decided to make several changes, for two main reasons: First, FormCard is bound to the card style of form as much as FormLayout was bound to the classic flat style. Also, it tried to provide ready-made components for every kind of control; so it had its own TextField, its own RadioButton and so on — effectively becoming its own separate toolkit.

So we opted instead to go down the route of having a more generic API, so the Forms module includes containers that define a semantic structure of a form, which contains all the normal controls — such as textfields, checkboxes and radiobuttons.

This is a code example of the new API:

  import QtQuick.Controls as QQC
  import org.kde.kirigami as Kirigami

  Kirigami.Form {
    Kirigami.FormGroup {
        title: "Global Settings"
        Kirigami.FormEntry {
            contentItem: QQC.CheckBox {
                text: "Show Sidebar"
            }
        }
        Kirigami.FormEntry {
            contentItem: QQC.CheckBox {
                text: "Auto Save"
            }
        }
    }
    Kirigami.FormGroup {
        title: "Theme Options"
        Kirigami.FormEntry {
            title: "Colors:"
            contentItem: QQC.CheckBox {
                text: "Dark Theme"
            }
        }
        Kirigami.FormSeparator {}
        Kirigami.FormEntry {
            contentItem: QQC.CheckBox {
                text: "High Contrast"
            }
        }
        ...
    }
  }

which will look like this:

Or, in mobile mode:

Semantically, a Form will contain one or more FormGroup objects, each of which will contain one or more FormEntry objects. Then a FormEntry will contain the control which represents the configuration of the particular thing. It can be a single control (like a button or a checkbox) or it can be any layout with completely custom contents.

I already ported 4 modules of systemsettings to the new system: the landing page, the “workspace options” kcm, the mouse settings and the touchpad settings.

But wait… this page looks exactly the same as before; why?

A key was to do an API that was as much as separated from any appearance as possible, as we don’t know how UI design trends will evolve in the future. But this also allows us another thing: to have two separate implementations: the new one “card based” and a legacy one which looks exactly like the current FormLayout components. This is used only in systemsettings, so we can port all the kcms without introducing glaring visual inconsistencies, and when we are done, flick the switch and convert the look of everything all in one go.

Since most of KDE’s QML applications already use the existing card-style kirigamiaddons FormCard components, the new look will be used there.

And then in the future, when trends change again, we can re-style all the settings pages in one go.

A call to action

We ideally want the whole set of systemsettings kcms to be ported as soon as possible to the new system, so we can have soon a nice visual overhaul in the whole systemsettings.

In order for this to happen, we need the help of everyone, so… patches welcome

As an example, this is the merge request that ported the first four kcms.

When porting, it’s also possible to see how the kcm will look with the new system as well, to make sure it works well for when we flick the switch. If we run in a terminal:

KDE_KIRIGAMI_FORMS_STYLE=cards systemsettings

We get systemsettings using the new style for pages already ported:

Porting from FormLayout to the new Form/FormGroup/FormEntry system should be really straightforward; it should be possible to make good progress in little time.

With your help, soon KDE’s settings will benefit from greater consistency, a more modern style, and easier adaptation to future designs.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a training/mentorship program that allows new contributors to open source to work on projects for between 175 to 350 hours under the guidance of experienced mentors.

KDE will mentor twelve projects in this year's Google Summer of Code.

Marknote

Marknote is a rich text notebooks organizer.

Prayag Jain aims to introduce a robust and high performance block editor and a proper markdown parser to Marknote under the guidance of Carl Schwan and Mathis Brüchert.

digiKam

digiKam is an advanced open-source digital photo management application which provides a comprehensive set of tools for importing, managing, editing, and sharing photos and raw files.

Srirupa Datta, who already successfully completed a GSoC in 2023 working on Krita, will this year work on digiKam to interface the database search engine to an AI-based LLM. This project is mentored by Gilles Caulier, Michael Miller and Maik Qualmann.

Drawy

Drawy is a recent addition to KDE applications! It is an infinite whiteboard tool useful for brainstorming.

Abdelhadi Wael will improve the text items by implementing rich text handling and other improvements. This project is mentored by Laurent Montel.

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is KDE's video editor.

Yash Bavadiya will work on improving the curves, gradients and time remapping effects. This project is mentored by Jean-Baptiste Mardelle.

Kirigami

Shubham Shinde, a successful participant in last year's GSoC working on Merkuro, will work this year again under the guidance of Carl Schwan to improve the Kirigami framework and the developer experience.

Okular

Okular is KDE's universal document viewer.

Ojas Maheshwari will work under the guidance of Albert Astals Cid to implement font subsetting when saving PDF files in Poppler (the PDF rendering library used by Okular).

Lokalize

Lokalize is the localization tool for KDE software and other free and open source software.

Navya Sai Sadu will improve Lokalize by redesigning the translation memory tab to help with the translators' experience. This project is mentored by Finley Watson.

KStars

KStars is the KDE astronomy software providing an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time.

Pavan Kumar S G will add a new AI powered guiding assistant for Ekos under the guidance of Jasem Mutlaq.

KeepSecret

KeepSecret is a password manager for viewing, editing, creating, or deleting passwords.

Roshani Kumari will work on improving the user experience and adding new features such as import/export of passwords, adding a built-in password generator, and much more. This work is mentored by Marco Martin.

Mentorship Portal

Ansh Singhal will work on creating a new join.kde.org website which aims to improve the onboarding experience by centralizing the different entry points the KDE community has. This project is mentored by Anish Tak, who was a successful mentee last year on the same topic!

Plasma Mobile

Tushar Gupta will rework some networking modules (KCM) to make them more mobile friendly. This work will be mentored by Carl Schwan and Devin Lin.

Mankala

Mankala is a two-player board game containing multiple variants.

Sayandeep Dutta will add a new interface to create tournaments for the Mankala game. This project is mentored by Benson Muite and Srisharan V. S. who completed a successful GSoC contributor on the same project last year.

I’m happy to announce that we have sealed bootable container images ready for testing for the Fedora Atomic Desktops!

Note: You can also read this post on the Fedora Magazine.

What are sealed bootable container images?

Sealed bootable container images include all the components needed to create a fully verified boot chain, from the firmware to the operating system composefs image. This relies on Secure Boot and thus only supports system booting with UEFI on x86_64 & aarch64.

The components are:

• systemd-boot as bootloader,
• a Unified Kernel Image (UKI) which includes the Linux kernel, an initrd and the kernel command line,
• a composefs repository with fs-verity enabled. This is managed by bootc.

Both systemd-boot and the UKI are signed for Secure Boot. The images are test images so the components are not signed with the official keys from Fedora.

The main direct benefit that we will get from this support is that we will be able to enable passwordless disk unlocking using the TPM in a way that will be reasonably secure by default.

How do I test those images?

See the instructions at github.com/travier/fedora-atomic-desktops-sealed on how to give the pre-built container and disk images a try and how to build your own.

We welcome testing and feedback! Please see the list of known issues and report new issue at github.com/travier/fedora-atomic-desktops-sealed. We’ll redirect them as needed to the right upstream projects.

Beware, those are testing images. The root account does not have a password set and sshd is enabled, by default, to make debugging easier. The UKI and systemd-boot are signed for Secure Boot but, since those are test images, they are not signed with the official keys from Fedora. Don’t use those images in production.

Where can I get more details about how this work?

If you want to know more about how sealed images work (i.e. how we make bootable containers, UKI and composefs work together to create a verified boot chain), see the following presentations and documentation:

• “Signed, Sealed, and Delivered”, with UKIs and composefs, from Allison and Timothée at FOSDEM 2025
• UKIs and composefs support for Bootable Containers, from Timothée at Devconf.cz 2025
• UKI, composefs and remote attestation for Bootable Containers, from Pragyan, Vitaly and Timothée at ASG 2025
• composefs backend documentation in bootc

Thanks to all the contributors that made this possible, notably (but non exhaustively) from the following projects: bootc & bcvk, composefs & composefs-rs, chunkah, podman & buildah and systemd.

Fedora 44 has been released! 🎉 So let’s see what is included in this new release for the Fedora Atomic Desktops variants (Silverblue, Kinoite, Sway Atomic, Budgie Atomic and COSMIC Atomic).

Note: You can also read this post on the Fedora Magazine.

Changes for all Atomic Desktops

Issue tracker moved to the new Fedora forge

We have moved the cross-variants issue tracker to the new Fedora forge. This is the best place to file issues that impacts all variants or to coordinate work between all of them. If you have issues specific to a given desktop environment then we usually prefer to track them in each respective SIG trackers. They are listed on the README for the atomic-desktops organization.

Unified documentation, hosted on the new forge

The unified documentation for all Atomic Desktops is finally live! Unfortunately the translations have not been migrated so we will need help to re-translate everything again, once the translation setup is ready with the new forge. It should be mostly copy/paste from the previous docs and this time we will only have to translate the docs once and not for every (new) variant.

See the tracking issue atomic-desktops#10.

Removal of FUSE version 2 libraries

FUSE version 2 has been deprecated and unmaintained for a while so we have removed it from the images. In practice, this means two things:

• If you are using AppImages, some of them may not work anymore.
• If you are using legacy backends with Plasma Vault on Kinoite, you need to migrate your data.

See the Fedora Change and the tracking issue atomic-desktops#50.

The implications are detailed below.

AppImages and the FUSE 2 libraries

Some AppImages are still using an old AppImage runtime that relies on FUSE 2 libraries being available on the host. See the discussion thread for examples on how to check the runtime of an AppImage.

If some of your AppImages do not work on Fedora Atomic Desktops 44, we recommend:

• Looking for a Flatpak for the application and giving it another try. Consider helping upstream package their application as a Flatpak.
• Reporting the issue upstream so that they are aware that they should use a newer runtime. Consider helping upstream with this as well.

EncFS or CryFS backends for Plasma Vaults are removed

KDE upstream no longer recommend using the EncFS nor CryFS backends for Plasma Vaults, notably because they rely on the FUSE 2 libraries. If you are using one of those backends, you should migrate your data to a new Vault using the only maintained backend (gocryptfs). Ideally this should occur before the update to Fedora 44. If you have already updated to Fedora 44 and need access to your data, you can layer the needed packages (cryfs or fuse-encfs) using rpm-ostree install <package>, then migrate your data and finally reset the layers with rpm-ostree reset.

Dropping compatibility for pkla polkit rules

Support for the legacy pkla polkit rules format has been removed. It is unlikely that you were relying on support for those rules as most of the ecosystem has moved on to the new Javascript based format.

See the Fedora Change and the tracking issue atomic-desktops#102.

What’s new in Silverblue

GNOME 50

Fedora Silverblue comes with the latest GNOME 50 release.

For more details about the changes that alongside GNOME 50, see What’s new in Fedora Workstation 44 on the Fedora Magazine.

What’s new in Kinoite

KDE Plasma 6.6

Fedora Kinoite ships with Plasma 6.6, Frameworks 6.24 and Gear 25.12.

See also What’s new in Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop 44 on the Fedora Magazine.

KDE Plasma Login Manager replaces SDDM

The brand new Plasma Login Manager replaces SDDM to provide a more integrated experience with systemd and the KDE Plasma session.

See the Fedora Change.

Unified out of the box experience with KDE Plasma Setup (OEM installation)

Thanks to the new Plasma Setup, it is now possible to install the system with Anaconda with minimal configuration and then complete the installation on the first boot by creating a new user and selecting the timezone. This is great when you want to install Fedora Kinoite on a computer and don’t want to setup a user in advance.

See the Fedora Change.

What’s new in Sway Atomic

Nothing specific for this release.

What’s new in Budgie Atomic

Fedora Budgie Atomic comes with the latest 10.10.2 Budgie release. This release brings Wayland support to Budgie Atomic. See the 10.10 release announcement for more details.

What’s new in COSMIC Atomic

Fedora COSMIC Atomic comes with the latest 1.0.8 release of the COSMIC desktop. This is now considered stable.

Universal Blue, Bluefin, Bazzite and Aurora

Our friends in the Universal Blue project (Bazzite, Bluefin, Aurora) have prepared the update to Fedora 44. Look for upcoming announcements in their Discourse.

As always, I heavily recommend checking them out, especially if you feel like some things are missing from the Fedora Atomic Desktops and you depend on them (NVIDIA drivers, extra media codec, out of tree kernel drivers, etc.).

What’s next

Helping us with a few nasty bugs

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Atomic Desktops, here are some bugs that we will have to fix in the short term. We would greatly appreciate help with:

• Fixing root mount options (atomic-desktops#72): This is a long standing and mostly invisible bug that impacts performance.

• Moving away from nss-altfiles (atomic-desktops#108): This is another long standing source of issues that new users regularly face.

Sealed Fedora Atomic Desktop bootable container images

Sealed images are now ready for testing! See the other article for all the details.

Roadmap to Bootable Containers

A lot of work is happening to make the transition to Bootable Containers as smooth as possible for our existing users. You can look at the roadmap for this transition at atomic-desktops#26.

One of the tasks is to move away from our unmaintained installation ISO building scripts to the new image-builder tooling. This is planned for Fedora 45 for the ostree variants and support for Bootable Container will follow right after.

Another task is to start building the Fedora Atomic Desktops Bootable Container images using the Fedora Konflux instance.

Where to reach us

We are looking for contributors to help us make the Fedora Atomic Desktops the best experience for Fedora users.

• Atomic Desktops SIG: Organization on Fedora’s Forge, #atomic-desktops:fedoraproject.org
• Silverblue: Workstation Working Group, #silverblue:fedoraproject.org
• Kinoite: KDE SIG, #kinoite:fedoraproject.org
• Sway Atomic: Sway SIG, #sway:fedoraproject.org
• Budgie Atomic: Budgie SIG, #budgie:fedoraproject.org
• COSMIC Atomic: COSMIC SIG, #cosmic:fedoraproject.org

Some time ago I used a feature in KDE called “Run a command” when an event triggered. It triggered for me when a calendar event fired and used Piper TTS to read the event to me out loud. A small popup and a pling don’t work for me.

I tried to get the feature back into KDE, but since the merge request isn’t going anywhere and people don’t give details how to implement it correctly I wrote Sigrun now. It is named after a Norse Valkyrie and is short for Signal Run.

It is a systemd service running as a user and listening on DBus signals. Once it finds a configured one, it runs its command. The desktop doesn’t matter.

Here is the rule that reads my calendar reminders aloud via kde-tts.py:

[[rule]]
name = "calendar-tts"

[rule.event]
type = "notification"

[rule.filter]
app_name = "kalendarac"
summary = "Meeting.*"

[rule.filter.hints]
"x-kde-eventId" = "reminder"

[rule.action]
command = "/usr/local/bin/kde-tts.py"
args = ["-t", "{summary}", "-d", "{body}"]

• crates.io/crates/sigrun
• codeberg.org/cryptomilk/sigrun

The Kdenlive team is happy to announce the first major release of 2026. This cycle focuses on stability, interface polish and usability improvements.

For the first time in Kdenlive's history, this version includes features implemented by so many different contributors. Our developer community is growing, don't hesitate to join us building a free and open source video editing program that respects the users privacy and provides a tool to democratize communication.

In case you missed it, check out the State of Kdenlive to learn more about the project's health and the nifty features coming soon.

Monitor Mirroring

This feature allows you to mirror any monitor while working in fullscreen mode. It’s especially useful when working with multiple displays or collaborating with others in the editing room, making it easier to share what you're doing without disrupting your workspace.

Effects and Transitions

This release improves effect and transition workflow. We improved the logic for luma files to adapt to different project profiles and automatically reload previews of downloaded lumas. We added a dedicated tab in the transitions list to browse luma files and added the ability to drag-and-drop transitions directly onto timeline clips. This release also comes with a new Euclid Eraser transition and a Heatmap effect. We also fixed issues with audio TAP effects and improved internationalization support, fixed a bug in the Video Noise Generator effect and scaling issues in the Transform effect.

Animated Previews

Transitions now include animated previews, making it much easier to visualize how they will look before applying them. Additionally, dropping a transition onto the timeline can now automatically adjust its duration to match the clips above and below, saving time and reducing manual tweaking. The first version of this feature was originally written by Swastik Patel, during KDE's SoK 2025.

Automatic Adjustment

Transitions automatically adjust to the length of the clip they are being applied to.

Math Expressions

Added basic math expression support in effect spinboxes.

New Heatmap Effect

Added a new frei0r heatmap0r effect.

Interface and Usability Improvements

Timeline

This release comes with many usability and workflow improvements to the timeline, such as a Disable Timeline Effects function to timeline hamburger menu, the ability to import and add clips directly from the timeline context menu with a smart length detection function, and sequences now have audio thumbnails. Other highlights include:

Continuous Panning

Hold the middle mouse button and drag to continuously pan the timeline even when going outside of the screen edges. Implemented by Abdias J Moya Perez.

Fixed Playhead

Added the option to lock the playhead at the center of the timeline during playback, scrubbing or seeking. Implemented by Abdias J Moya Perez.

Playhead/Mouse Zoom

Added a button in the Status Bar to toggle between zooming to the mouse cursor position or the playhead position. Implemented by the mrfantastic.

Multi-Clip Speed Changes

Added the ability to change the playback speed of multiple clips at once either by directly ctrl + dragging in the timeline or by using the Clip Speed tool. Implemented by Vineet Tiwari.

Audio Capture

Improved support for external recording devices, now the channel count and sample rate combo boxes only display values supported by the selected hardware. Also added the option to choose the sample format (8bit, 16bit, 32bit, and float) as well as a button to use the hardware's default settings.

Subtitles and Speech Tools

This release fixes issues with cutting, moving, and saving subtitles, and solves a crash cutting subtitle clips. It also fixes a problem where searching for multiple words in the Speech Editor did not work correctly. We also improved the installation process for the Whisper and SeamlessM4T plugins and updated their requirements.

Other Noteworthy Features

• Added Clear Undo History option in the Edit menu
• Added HD-ready (1366×768) resolution to project profiles
• Added Add to Project Bin option to Render Widget to directly add rendered file to the Project Bin
• Hide mouse cursor when placed over monitor in fullscreen and not moving for 2 seconds
• Added option to edit a video clip with external program (useful for programs like Gyroflow)
• Rearranged Marker menu items into groups and added a Delete All Timeline Markers action
• Ability to directly add clips to folders from the context menu in the Project Bin
• Added AMF encoding profile for Windows

Give back to Kdenlive

Releases are possible thanks to donations by the community. Donate now!

Need help ?

As usual, you will find very useful tips in our documentation website. You can also get help and exchange your ideas in our Kdenlive users Matrix chat room.

Get involved

Kdenlive relies on its community, your help is always welcome. You can contribute by :

• Helping to identify and triage bugs
• Contribute to translating Kdenlive in your language
• Promote Kdenlive in your local community

For the full changelog continue reading on kdenlive.org.

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week includes an interesting blend of improvements. Lots of visual stuff, so get ready for a ton of screenshots and screen recordings!

Notable new features

Plasma 6.7

The Kicker Application Menu widget can now be configured to show a “Recent Locations” item. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #420951)

Network connections can now be duplicated. (Kartikeya Tyagi, KDE Bugzilla #499188)

There’s now a new “has parent window” window rule you can use to target child dialog windows specifically. (Kai Uwe Broulik, kwin MR #8969)

Notable UI improvements

Plasma 6.6.5

Dragging a search result for a System Settings page to the desktop now creates a launcher to that page as you would expect. This completes a mini-project to improve dragging-and-dropping things to the desktop that we started a while back. (Antti Savolainen, KDE Bugzilla #500259)

Plasma 6.7

Discover now has fancier application page headers with more obvious install buttons! (Oliver Beard, discover MR #1297)

Discover no longer disables the “More Information” button on list items for in-progress updates. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #431719)

Discover now does a better job of handling the rare case where an automatic update to a Flatpak app introduces a compatibility issue you can’t easily recover from. Now it will warn you about this once instead of continuously. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #509760)

You can now drag favorite apps out of their areas in Kicker and Dashboard to un-favorite them. Kickoff is coming soon, too! (Christoph Wolk, plasma-desktop MR #3665 and KDE Bugzilla #518749)

When your laptop is plugged in at maximum charge, doing something that changes the power profile to a non-default one now shows only the power profile icon in the System Tray, and omits the fully-charged battery icon because that part is obvious. (Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #518802)

Improved some awkwardly-worded labels in System Settings and Plasma. (Philipp Kiemle, plasma-desktop MR #3674 and plasma-workspace MR #6522)

Frameworks 6.26

Reduced the amount of blurriness seen in icons throughout QtQuick-based apps using the Kirigami.Icon component when using a low fractional scale factor like 150% or less. (Volodymyr Zolotopupov, kirigami MR #2070)

Before:

Added a search provider for startpage.com, so you can search there from KRunner. (Antti Savolainen, KDE Bugzilla #503976)

Notable bug fixes

Plasma 6.6.5

Fixed a case where the Plasma Login Manager could crash when connecting and disconnecting multiple monitors while the login screen is visible. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #519302)

Fixed some cases where Plasma could crash at login. (David Edmundson, plasma-workspace MR #6520)

Fixed multiple accessibility issues: key repeat not working in the Orca screen reader, and various UI elements not being read properly. (Nicolas Fella, KDE Bugzilla #519143, KDE Bugzilla #519333, and KDE Bugzilla #519217)

Fixed a tricky issue in Spectacle that could make large images fail to automatically copy to the clipboard right after the app exits. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #509065)

Fixed another cause of the issue whereby de-focused full-screen windows could sometimes inappropriately appear at the top of the window stack. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #484155)

Fixed a layout glitch on System Settings’ Colors page that could make UI elements in the color previews overflow when using some non-default fonts and font sizes. (Akseli Lahtinen, KDE Bugzilla #516413)

Changing the brightness or any screen settings no longer terminates Spectacle’s sectangular region recordings. (Xaver Hugl, kwin MR #9127)

Frameworks 6.26

Fixed some visual glitches around radio buttons in the Audio Volume widget. (David Edmundson, ksvg MR #103)

Notable in performance & technical

Plasma 6.6.5

Fixed an issue that made System Settings’ Touchscreen page appear while the “highlight changed settings” feature is enabled even if you don’t have a touchscreen. (Jin Liu, KDE Bugzilla #518868)

Plasma 6.7

Turned on the “overlay planes” feature for Intel GPUs, which should improve performance and save some energy when using cooperative games and apps. (Xaver Hugl, kwin MR #8699)

Improved power efficiency for full-screen windows and effects that don’t gain any benefit from using the “direct scan-out” feature; now they’ll only use it if it will save power. (Xaver Hugl, kwin MR #9120)

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.