KDE developers have announced progress on KDE Plasma 6.7, highlighting a long-requested update to virtual desktops for multi-screen setups. More specifically, each display will be able to switch between virtual desktops independently, thus giving multi-monitor users greater control over workspace organization. Previously, switching applied to all screens simultaneously.
The second striking new feature is that KWin’s Wayland session handling now supports the Wayland session management protocol. This will allow reliable restoration of application states after a restart, enabling applications to remember their size and screen position between sessions.
KDE devs note that toolkit, library, and application-level support are still required, so the feature is not yet complete, but the compositor-side foundation is now in place.
In addition, Plasma 6.7 will introduce several user-facing improvements. Users can select a default calendar application in System Settings, and the Digital Clock widget will support a middle-click action to open the chosen calendar app.
Window switching will include a new option that allows users to set the Alt+Tab switcher to always appear on the primary screen, rather than following keyboard focus or pointer activity.
Moreover, app-specific actions found through search can be marked as favorites, newly installed apps will be highlighted in the Kicker Application Menu, and users can drag and drop applications directly into the Favorites sections of the Kickoff, Kicker, and Dashboard launchers.
Discover will gain an option to quit automatically after completing updates, and Discover’s grid and list items have been redesigned for denser information display, and Kicker will now show tooltips for truncated labels.
In the System Monitor app, multiple GPUs will be identified by their actual names instead of arbitrary numbers, and users will have access to top-level actions for direct navigation to specific pages via the context menu or shortcuts.
Plasma 6.7 will also address issues such as the Audio Volume widget not recognizing newly connected default audio devices, restored app rearrangement in the Quick Launch widget, clipboard behavior when non-text history saving is disabled, and Spectacle’s magnifier in Rectangular Region mode.
For more information, refer to the “This Week in Plasma” post series on the KDE Blogs. Plasma 6.7 is scheduled to be released in mid-June.
