Three weeks before the final stable release, scheduled for October 21, the KDE community has announced Plasma 6.5 Beta, giving users an early look at what’s coming in the next major desktop update.
On the design side, one of the most noticeable changes is the addition of rounded bottom window corners for Breeze-themed, borderless windows. Additionally, Plasma 6.5 also introduces day/night switching for both global themes and wallpapers, as well as an option to prefer either light or dark variants of dynamic wallpapers.
Users can now even choose which global themes are displayed on the System Settings landing page, making customization a bit more straightforward.
The clipboard gets an upgrade, too, with the ability to star and save items for easy reuse. Over in search, KRunner-powered queries now include fuzzy matching for applications and the ability to find global shortcuts, which should make pulling up the right result quicker.
For digital artists, Plasma 6.5 introduces support for configuring tablet dials and touch rings, a feature many users with drawing tablets have been requesting. Meanwhile, widgets see incremental improvements, like better Sticky Notes behavior when placed in a panel.
Accessibility also gets attention in this beta. The Zoom effect now tracks the text insertion point, and Plasma includes a handful of small yet important tweaks to enhance readability, minimize flicker, and provide visual cues for sound events.
On the system side, Plasma 6.5 introduces printer ink level monitoring, driver installation through Discover, quick toggles in the System Settings sidebar, and a new portal permissions page that extends beyond just Flatpak apps.
From a technical perspective, the beta comes with several Wayland enhancements. Plasma now supports the Overlay Planes protocol, which should gradually help cut down GPU and power usage for full-screen content.
It also adds support for the Picture-in-Picture protocol and the Pointer Warp protocol, further rounding out Plasma’s Wayland compatibility.
For a list of all changes, see here or refer to the official announcement.
