KDE developers have announced more updates coming to the upcoming Plasma 6.8 desktop environment, scheduled for release on October 14, 2026.
One of the first changes users will notice is with auto-hide panels. KDE has shortened the time it takes for a panel to hide after the pointer leaves it from 500 milliseconds to just 50 milliseconds, making the panels feel much more responsive.
System Settings will also have a better search feature for people using Plasma in languages other than English. With Plasma 6.8, you can use English keywords along with those from your chosen language. For example, searching for “mouse” on a system set to French will still bring up the “souris” settings page.
There’s also a helpful update to the Autostart page in System Settings. Now, you can temporarily disable applications and other entries without deleting them, making it easier to manage which items start up with your system.
The lock screen is also getting some updates. If there are several ways to log in, Plasma 6.8 will let you choose which one you want to use, and each method will have a better interface. KDE says this feature is still experimental and there isn’t a graphical way to set up all authentication methods yet.
Moreover, KWin will now stop users from choosing display resolutions that are so low the desktop becomes hard to use or fix. KDE has also improved how lock-screen buttons line up, especially in languages where translations can change the layout.
Plasma’s automatic brightness feature is getting smarter as well. The system will now remember your manual brightness changes and use them to learn your preferred brightness levels in different lighting conditions. In Discover, the system will remember whether you’ve already marked a review as useful and will stop you from rating the same review again.
Audio improvements include making the standalone Audio Volume widget popup big enough to show everything without needing to scroll right away. Error messages are also clearer when there are problems with Plasma’s microphone testing feature.
The microphone tester is also being improved behind the scenes. Instead of always using a 44.1 kHz sample rate, Plasma 6.8 will use whatever sample rate your system is set to, which helps avoid problems for people who use their systems for audio production.
Other UI improvements include highlighting non-default options on the Remote Desktop page in System Settings, making sure cursor feedback effects are always visible near the edges of the screen, improving Breeze styling for GTK 4 app menus and window borders, and making KWin’s GPU-reset notifications work for all GPUs, not just the main one.
On the performance side, Discover’s background update notifier now uses much less memory when checking for updates, and Plasma should start a bit faster because it no longer does extra work when loading wallpapers.
On top of that, KWin’s screenshot feature is faster and more efficient, and screen recordings should look smoother on high-refresh-rate displays.
Several bugs in Plasma 6.8 have also been fixed. Screen readers can now reach all parts of the Activities sidebar, and a clipboard issue that stopped users from copying multiple cells between LibreOffice Calc sheets has been resolved.
Also, Plasma’s Remote Desktop System Tray icon will disappear correctly if a remote connection ends unexpectedly. KDE has also fixed two rare cases where the Audio Volume widget could show the wrong panel icon.
KDE Plasma 6.8 is still being actively developed before its planned October 14 release, so more features and improvements are likely to come before the final version is ready. More details about the ongoing development work are available in KDE’s latest “This Week in Plasma” report.
i would like the activity pager, showing on left, could show at right or top or down.
More important, it is useless. I wish we could take an application and move it to the desire activity, like we can on Cosmic, for instance.
For now, it is just usefull to see what wallpaper I have on each activity.
Bring “Pile”, french word, feature like in Cairo-dock. It creates a shortcut folder. You put in it all you like. Just with drag and drop.
Honestly, I find it stupid. They should let the user choose the amount of time in ms the panel remains visible before hiding. Like on Windows