KDE’s classic Oxygen theme is getting another round of improvements with the upcoming Plasma 6.8 release. The details come from longtime KDE contributor Filip Fila, who has helped drive Oxygen’s recent revival alongside original Oxygen designer Nuno Pinheiro.
One of the biggest changes is proper support for accent colors. Until now, Oxygen and Air used fixed blue glows in several places, ignoring the accent color selected by the user. With Plasma 6.8, both themes will become fully accent-color aware, and window glows will follow the system accent color by default. Users can still choose a custom glow color if they prefer.
The Oxygen cursor theme is also receiving a substantial refresh. Nuno Pinheiro, one of the original designers behind Oxygen, has expanded the cursors with more available sizes and introduced a new busy animation. The icon set is growing as well, with several new additions arriving as part of the ongoing restoration work.
Another area getting attention is fractional scaling. Plasma 6.8 should fix several visual issues seen with Oxygen, including rough-looking radio buttons, slider handles, and icons inside buttons. The window frame and title bar should blend more cleanly when fractional scaling is enabled.
Users who prefer a flatter appearance will gain the option to disable Oxygen’s title bar gradient. Meanwhile, developers are working on clearer taskbar indicators, especially to distinguish minimized applications from pinned launchers.
Several smaller refinements are also included, such as slimmer application scrollbars, fixes to the Air theme, and improved panel glows. Work elsewhere in KDE is making selection styling in Dolphin and QtQuick applications more themeable, benefiting Oxygen and other third-party themes.
Finally, just to note that Oxygen itself is not installed with KDE Plasma by default, although some distros choose to include it. The theme has recently gained additional exposure through SteamOS, Bazzite, and Aurora, all of which include Oxygen in their system images.
For additional details, see the post on Fila’s blog.
The changes are expected to arrive alongside KDE Plasma 6.8, scheduled for release on October 14.
Image credits: Filip Fila
