This Week in KDE Apps
Accessibility enhancements, new releases and performance boosts
Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in KDE Apps"! Every week we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE apps.
This week we enhanced the accessibility of a bunch of our most popular apps; released new versions of KleverNotes, KPhotoAlbum; and improved the performance and usability of KDE Connect, Kate, Konqueror, and more.
Let's get started!
Accessibility
We made the inline notifications that appear above the view in Dolphin, Gwenview, Okular, and many other applications fully accessible by keyboard and to screen readers. Applications will need to opt-in to actually have them announced though. (Felix Ernst, KDE Frameworks 6.8, Link, Dolphin 24.12.0, Link)
Dolphin Manage your files
After renaming a file, the renamed file is immediately selected. (Jin Liu, 24.12.0. Link)
Merkuro Contact Manage your contacts with speed and ease
The OpenPGP and S/MIME certificates of a contact are now displayed directly in Merkuro Contact. Clicking on them will open Kleopatra and show additional information. (Carl Schwan, 24.12.0. Link)
KAddressBook An address book manager
Fix a crash when editing a contact with a nonstandard phone type. (Jonathan Marten, 24.08.3. Link)
Kate Advanced Text Editor
We managed to reduce KDE's advanced text editor startup time by 250ms (Waqar Ahmed, 24.12.0. Link 1, link 2)
The Quick Open tool can now be used to search and browse the projects open in the current session (Akseli Lahtinen, 24.12.0. Link)
KDE Connect Seamless connection of your devices
The list of devices you can connect to now shows the connected and remembered devices separately. (Albert Astals Cid, 24.12.0. Link)
KCron Task Scheduler
Improve the clarity of the "Print Summary…" button. (Thomas Duckworth, 24.12.0. Link)
The printed output is now translated. (Carl Schwan, 24.12.0. Link)
KleverNotes Take and manage your notes
KleverNotes 1.1.0 is out! KDE's note-taking app has a faster Markdown parser, a better toolbar and a WYSIWYG-like editor. Read the full announcement!.
KMail A feature-rich email application
Fix the dates in the message lists being stuck at 'Today' and 'Yesterday' even after the day has changed. (Christoph Erhardt, 24.08.3. Link)
Konqueror KDE File Manager & Web Browser
Our venerable file explorer/web browser comes with improved auto-filling of login information. (Stefano Crocco, 24.12.0. Link)
KPhotoAlbum KDE image management software
KPhotoAlbum 5.13.0 is out. This is a small update that fixes numerous bugs and reworks timespan calculation. Read the full announcement
KStars Desktop Planetarium
KStars was ported to Qt6/KF6. (Jasem Mutlaq. Link)
KTorrent BitTorrent Client
It is now possible to specify an https URL as webseeds in the "Create a Torrent" dialog. (Jack Hill, 24.12.0. Link)
NeoChat Chat on Matrix
KDE's homegrown Matrix instant messaging chat client comes with a redesigned general room settings dialog. (Carl Schwan, 24.12.0. Link)
Tokodon Browse the Fediverse
We have added an "Open Server in Browser" button in the profile editor. This lets you configure some settings not exposed via the API that Tokodon uses. (Joshua Goins, 24.12.0. Link)
Tokodon now clarifies that a user's notes are private. (Joshua Goins, 24.12.0. Link)
Improve the names and descriptions of various profile options. (Joshua Goins, 24.12.0. Link)
Tokodon now lets you manage your followers and following users. Which means, it's now possible to forcibly remove users from your followers list. (Joshua Goins, 24.12.0. Link)
Added a new "Following" feed, to quickly page through your follows and their feed similar to the now discontinued Cohost social network.
Platforms
Android
Volker Krause posted a summary of all the improvements made to the Android platform on Android in October. This includes the retirement of Qt 5 Android CI, better translations lookup, dark mode support and more. Read the full blog post
SailfishOS
Thanks to Adam Pigg and rinigus, Qt6 and KF6 are now available on SailfishOS. This means Kirigami applications built with Qt6 can now be packaged on that platform. Read the announcement
...And Everything Else
This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out Nate's blog about Plasma and be sure not to miss his This Week in Plasma series, where every Saturday he covers all the work being put into KDE's Plasma desktop environment.
For a complete view of what's going on, visit KDE's Planet, where you can find all KDE news unfiltered directly from our contributors.
Get Involved
The KDE organization has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we're going to need your support for KDE to become sustainable.
You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved. 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. There are many things you can do: you can help hunt and confirm bugs, even maybe solve them; contribute designs for wallpapers, web pages, icons and app interfaces; translate messages and menu items into your own language; promote KDE in your local community; and a ton more things.
You can also help us by donating. Any monetary contribution, however small, will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
To get your application mentioned here, please ping us in invent or in Matrix.