Release AnnouncementsPlasma 5.18 LTS Beta

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KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS Beta

Thursday, 16 January 2020.

The Plasma 5.18 LTS Beta is out!

This new version of your favorite desktop environment adds neat new features that make your life easier, including clearer notifications, streamlined settings for your system and the desktop layout, much improved GTK integration, and more. Plasma 5.18 is easier and more fun, while at the same time allowing you to do more tasks faster.

Apart from all the cool new stuff, Plasma 5.18 also comes with LTS status. LTS stands for "Long Term Support" and this means 5.18 will be updated and maintained by KDE contributors for the next couple of years (regular versions are maintained for 4 months). So, if you are thinking of updating or migrating your school, company or organization to Plasma, this version is your best bet. You get the most recent stable version of Plasma for the long term.

Read on to discover everything that is new in Plasma 5.18 LTS…

Plasma

Emoji Selector



Customize Layout Global Settings

GTK Applications with CSDs and Theme Integration

Night Color System Tray Widget

Emoji Selector that can be opened through the application launcher or with the Meta + . keyboard shortcut

+ keyboard shortcut New global edit mode which replaces the desktop toolbox button and lets you easily customize your desktop layout

Improved touch-friendliness for the Kickoff application launcher and widget editing

Support for GTK applications which use Client Side Decorations, adding proper shadows and resize areas for them

GTK apps now also automatically inherit Plasma's settings for fonts, icons, cursors and more.

There's a new System Tray widget for toggling the Night Color feature and by default it automatically appears when it's on

More compact design to choose the default audio device in the Audio Volume System Tray widget

Clickable volume indicator and tooltip item highlight indicators in the Task Manager

Circular Application Launcher menu user icon

Option to hide the lock screen clock

It's now possible to configure keyboard shortcuts that turn Night Color and Do Not Disturb mode on or off

Windy conditions shown in weather widget

Notifications

Draggable Download File Icon

Bluetooth Device Battery Low Notification



The timeout indicator on notification popups has been made circular and surrounds the close button

A draggable icon in the "file downloaded" notification has been added, so you can quickly drag it to places

Plasma now shows you a notification warning when a connected Bluetooth device is about to run out of power

System Settings

User Feedback Application Style

Plasma gained optional User Feedback settings (disabled by default), allowing you to give us detailed system information and statistics on how often individual features of Plasma you use

Added a slider for the global animation speed

Redesigned Application Style settings with a grid view

Improved the search in the system settings sidebar

An option to scroll to clicked location in the scrollbar track has been added

The System Settings Night Color page has a clearer user interface now

Discover

Reading and Writing Review Comments

Discover's default keyboard focus has been switched to the search field

It's now possible to search for add-ons from the main page

Added nested comments for addons

Made design improvements to the sidebar header and reviews

More

NVIDIA GPU stats

Decreased the amount of visual glitches in apps when using fractional scaling on X11

Made it possible to show NVIDIA GPU stats in KSysGuard

New Since 5.12 LTS

For those upgrading from our previous Long Term Support release here are some of the highlights from the last two years of development:

Completely rewritten notification system

Plasma Browser Integration

Many redesigned system settings pages, either using a consistent grid view or just an overhauled interface

Global menu support for GTK applications

Display Management improvements including new OSD and widget

Flatpak portal support

Night Color feature

Thunderbolt Device Management

Feedback Discuss Plasma 5 on the KDE Forums Plasma 5 board. You can provide feedback direct to the developers via the Plasma Matrix chat room, Plasma-devel mailing list or report issues via bugzilla. If you like what the team is doing, please let them know! Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Supporting KDE

KDE is a Free Software community that exists and grows only because of the help of many volunteers that donate their time and effort. KDE is always looking for new volunteers and contributions, whether it is help with coding, bug fixing or reporting, writing documentation, translations, promotion, money, etc. All contributions are gratefully appreciated and eagerly accepted. Please read through the Supporting KDE page for further information or become a KDE e.V. supporting member through our Join the Game initiative.

About KDE

KDE is an international technology team that creates free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. Among KDE's products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites and hundreds of software titles in many categories including Internet and web applications, multimedia, entertainment, educational, graphics and software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60 languages and is built with ease of use and modern accessibility principles in mind. KDE's full-featured applications run natively on Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows and macOS.

Trademark Notices. KDE® and the K Desktop Environment® logo are registered trademarks of KDE e.V. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.

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