KDE developers Nate Graham and John Veness shared another weekly update on the ongoing work on the Plasma 6.8 release, scheduled for mid-October, which will bring a useful upgrade to Spectacle, KDE’s screenshot and screen-recording utility, that will capture audio alongside video.
Users will be able to choose whether Spectacle records sound from a microphone, the system’s audio output, or both simultaneously. This is expected to make the built-in recorder considerably more practical for creating tutorials, demonstrations, and other screen recordings without relying on a separate audio-capture application.
System Monitor is also gaining a small improvement in Plasma 6.8. More specifically, it can display VRAM usage as a percentage of the total available video memory, in line with the way regular RAM usage is already presented.
Several interface refinements are included as well. Combobox popups across Plasma now follow the active Plasma theme instead of using a hardcoded Breeze-style appearance. Their menu highlights also no longer animate in and out, bringing their behavior in line with other menus throughout the desktop.
The Remote Desktop page in System Settings has been adjusted to work better in small and narrow windows. Previously, its layout could appear awkward or partially broken when the window was reduced to dimensions similar to a phone screen.
System Settings’ “Report a Bug in the Current Page” option now also works for third-party settings pages that are not part of KDE itself.
On top of that, auto-login in Plasma Login Manager now works on systems shipping older systemd versions, including KDE Neon. External monitor brightness should also respond more quickly after users move the brightness slider in the Brightness & Color widget.
Among this week’s bug fixes is a correction for scrolling problems in System Monitor’s Configure Columns interface. Plus, the dialog has been converted into a traditional window.
The Networks widget received a fix for an issue where connecting to a network that the user did not have permission to edit could incorrectly make every other available network appear connected.
On the technical side, Spectacle no longer depends on OpenCV. KDE developers replaced its use for the blur effect with a lighter implementation that still offers adequate performance.
For additional details, refer to the “This Week in Plasma” post series on the KDE Blogs.
Image credits: KDE Project
