KDE’s new Union theming system gained initial support for styling QtWidgets-based apps (Akseli Lahtinen). It’s a first draft with known visual glitches, but a notable milestone. Plasma 6.8 is taking shape.
New features
- Plasma 6.8: Union theming for QtWidgets apps; built-in RDP server adapts quality to available bandwidth for steadier frame rates; Strongswan VPN now supports EAP-TTLS authentication.
UI improvements
- Plasma 6.7.5: Discover only offers
.debinstall on systems that natively support the format. - Plasma 6.8:
- Clipboard history now indicates when copied text was marked secret, instead of silently hiding it.
- Screen-recording indicator appears only during actual recording.
- Overview effect easier to trigger via four-finger touchpad swipe.
- Digital Clock calendar event text fully selectable.
- Less awkward dialog design for drawing-tablet pen button config.
- Bluetooth widget’s “Configure” button moved to the standard location.
- Enterprise Wi-Fi connection jumps straight to credential entry.
- System Tray icons stay visible until their popup closes.
- “Keep selection and clipboard the same” no longer disables unrelated settings.
- Mass crashes now produce a single System Tray icon listing all crashes, not dozens.
- Frameworks 6.30: Better contrast for in-window Kirigami dialogs in dark themes; System Monitor graph legends request tabular numerals for alignment.
Bug fixes
- Plasma 6.6.7: Security fix — screen locker failed to lock under a specific screen-off + grace-period configuration.
- Plasma 6.7.5: Discover no longer hangs on update checks with the Snap backend and no upgradeable Snaps; non-KDE app crashes on dialog close fixed; pointer-movement regression in VMs with non-accelerated drivers fixed; RTL languages no longer block force-quit in System Monitor; malformed panel edit-mode tooltip fixed; DrKonqi no longer crash-loops until memory exhaustion.
- Plasma 6.8: Fixed Plasma’s second-most-common crash (during logout); Plasma Search “Defaults” button and non-default highlighting work correctly; all Kickoff widgets can return results for uninstalled apps; logout sound no longer needlessly delays logout.
Performance & technical
- Plasma 6.7.5: Improved HDR appearance with ICC profiles.
- Plasma 6.8: Better performance/power efficiency for full-screen content on Intel and NVIDIA GPUs with HDR, ICC profiles, or Night Light; HLG transfer function support in KWin; screen-casting latency cut by one frame; lower resource use for notification/Activities thumbnails and the Trash widget; Spectacle omits the alpha channel when unused; disabling a System Tray widget frees memory immediately;
showConfigurationInterface()works in Plasma scripting; Plasma launches with a plain background if all wallpaper plugins are broken or missing. - Frameworks 6.30: KWallet log spam removed along with the non-functional feature causing it.
- KDE Gear 26.12.0: System Settings’ Proxy page rewritten in QML, enabling Plasma Mobile support with a near-identical design.
Contributing
KDE asks for help with the weekly report (via its Matrix room), general project involvement — noting donated time matters more than money and non-programmers are welcome — and financial donations covering operations, salaries, and contributor travel. Work is featured here by pushing commits to merge requests on invent.kde.org.
https://blogs.kde.org/2026/08/28/this-week-in-plasma-qtwidgets-apps-join-the-union
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