The KDE team has announced the release of Plasma 6.5.3, the third bugfix update to the major Plasma 6.5 series. While no new features are introduced, Plasma 6.5.3 focuses on refinement and reliability.
The Breeze style receives some corrections, including a palette reset fix and improved behavior in the QQC2 menu style. The GTK integration layer also sees updates, resolving missing icons in GTK4 apps and correcting corner radii for client- and server-side decorated windows.
Discover includes multiple fixes that address Flatpak handling and error conditions. The update improves GError behavior, adjusts how size changes are processed, and enables KCrash for the notification helper.
KWin gets the most extensive set of changes. The window manager improves screenshot accuracy, refines toplevel drag handling, fixes several Wayland-specific issues, and adjusts rendering paths for more consistent visuals.
The release also includes a comprehensive list of test suite corrections, X11 guards, crash-related fixes, and DRM backend improvements, such as enhanced async present handling, more reliable modesetting after suspend, and additional debugging tools for addressing synchronization issues.
Flatpak Permissions improves keyboard accessibility and sidebar navigation, while KDE GTK Config corrects formatting issues in gsettings font configurations. kpipewire adjusts DRM modifier handling, improving stability in setups where usable modifiers are unavailable.
Plasma Desktop includes several fixes in Kickoff and Kicker, improving arrow key navigation, menu layout sizing, context menu handling, and hover behavior in Folder View. The system tray and notifications components receive multiple corrections as well, including fixes for timestamp behavior, clipboard actions, and panel configuration handling.
Other modules also receive focused improvements. Plasma System Monitor fixes context menu positioning and header hiding logic. Powerdevil adjusts dark resume handling for s2idle systems. The Plasma browser integration plugin improves media artwork selection, and libplasma resolves an issue that caused KWin to lock up on startup.
Lastly, the release also includes fixes for xdg-desktop-portal-kde, addressing clipboard signaling, shortcut management, remote desktop clipboard support, and avatar assignment. Plasma Mobile includes a small but important reliability fix in its shell DBus client, ensuring message replies are validated before use.
For more information, refer to the release announcement or visit KDE Plasma 6.5.3’s full changelog. The next update to the desktop environment, version 6.5.4, is scheduled for release in two weeks, on December 9.
As always, if you’re using a rolling release distribution, keep an eye on your distribution’s repositories—version 6.5.3 is expected to be released there in the coming days or weeks.
