The KDE team has announced Plasma 6.5.5, the fifth bugfix update to the major 6.5 series, which follows over a month after the previous 6.5.4 release. While no new features are introduced, Plasma 6.5.5 focuses on refinement and reliability.
A significant portion of this release targets Wayland and KWin. Multiple fixes address input handling, cursor behavior under scaling, drag-and-drop edge cases, window rules activation, and multi-monitor scenarios, including more reliable screen targeting for window movement shortcuts.
Xwayland also receives corrections related to key repeat handling, while legacy X11 code paths see build and cleanup fixes to ensure compatibility with newer Qt versions.
Apart from that, desktop components and applets receive numerous polish updates. The weather applet fixes several display issues, including pressure units, night icons, and zero-degree temperature visibility. Kickoff, desktop containments, and panel configuration behavior have been corrected, alongside improvements to search scoring in KRunner’s service runner.
Moreover, wallpaper previews now respect aspect ratios more consistently, and notes applets handle cursor positioning more reliably when working with external data.
System integration tools also benefit, as Discover resolves issues with refresh shortcuts and hardcoded platform naming, Flatpak permissions handling is optimized, and Plasma NetworkManager corrects QR code generation for WPA3 networks.
Power management, print handling, and System Settings receive targeted fixes to prevent incorrect authorization states, delayed resource cleanup, and missing UI updates after language changes.
Under the hood, several Plasma libraries are cleaned up and modernized:
- libkscreen removes obsolete backends and updates its test suite.
- libplasma addresses dialog positioning and focus behavior.
- plasma-activities-stats fixes string-escaping issues.
- Plasma Mobile components are also updated with improved error handling and configuration loading.
For more information, refer to the release announcement or visit KDE Plasma 6.5.5’s full changelog. The next (and the last) update to the 6.5 series of the desktop environment, version 6.5.6, is scheduled for release on March 10.
Before that, however, there’s another major event to look forward to: the release of Plasma 6.6 on February 17, which promises a range of exciting changes.
As always, if you’re using a rolling release distribution, keep an eye on your distribution’s repositories. Version 6.5.5 is expected to be released there in the coming days or weeks.
