KDE developer Nate Graham shared another weekly update on the ongoing work around Plasma, and this time the focus is mostly on smoother animations, small usability refinements, and a couple of important bug fixes planned for the upcoming Plasma 6.8 release, scheduled for mid-October.
One small addition is that Plasma’s Emoji Selector app has been updated to Unicode Emoji Standard version 17. This means users will get access to the latest batch of emojis supported by Unicode 17, including the new “distorted face” emoji.
On the visual side, Plasma 6.8 will bring a better version of the “Bouncing app icon” launch feedback effect. The animation now uses what KDE describes as a better physics model, a more suitable easing curve, and a higher frame rate. Notifications also receive a visual update, with the sliding animation now using a more natural easing curve for smoother, better-integrated movement.
Another usability change removes a hidden keyboard shortcut that could accidentally enable clipboard actions. Until now, pressing Meta+Ctrl+X could turn on clipboard actions, sometimes causing unexpected popups to appear after copying URLs. Since the shortcut was easy to trigger by mistake and not obvious to users, KDE has now removed it.
Additionally, the Digital Clock widget now requests tabular numerals, ensuring the clock maintains a consistent width as the time changes, especially in cases where previous code was insufficient. Plus, Discover, KDE’s software center, has renamed the “CD and DVD” category to “Disc Burning” to better reflect its contents.
KDE team has also improved discoverability for the System Settings page that manages the popup for alternative characters when holding a key, and the DrKonqi crash reporting wizard now informs users when it is safe to close the window, making the process clearer.
On the bug-fixing side, Plasma 6.8 includes a fix for what KDE describes as the most common crash in Plasma, which could occur from time to time on systems using multiple screens. Another fix affects RDP clients. Minimizing the RDP client window will no longer stop the video stream.
Finally, Plasma 6.8 adds support for the Emulated Input system version 1.6. KWin now uses only OpenGL ES internally, ensuring compatibility with supported hardware, including older GPUs.
The change also comes while Vulkan support in KWin is still further down the road. For now, KDE developers do not expect downsides from using OpenGL ES internally, while the move should keep the compositor compatible with a broad range of systems.
For additional details, refer to the “This Week in Plasma” post series on the KDE Blogs.
