Dolphin 26.08, and KIO perf improvements

[Konqi]

Dolphin 26.08 has been released. Here is more of what changed in it, and in the KIO framework underneath it.

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://blogs.kde.org/2026/08/26/dolphin-26.08-and-kio-perf-improvements/

[jinliu]

Alessio Bonfiglio replaced the hidden auto-detecting regex behaviour with an explicit mode selector offering Plain Text, Glob and Regular Expression, plus a case-sensitivity toggle.

Does this also apply for the “simple” file search? Because it using regex surprises many users (especially when searching for file names like “[draft].txt”, as mentioned in the blog).

[meven]

@jinliu

Does this also apply for the “simple” file search? Because it using regex surprises many users (especially when searching for file names like “[draft].txt”, as mentioned in the blog).

Yes, that applies to the filter feature, shortcuts / Ctrl+I. (I for filter)
Fixing this confusion was precisely the MR objective.

[EatMyShorts]

@Konqi

A button to restore view properties to their defaults, which I added for the per-folder view properties case. It enables and disables itself depending on whether the current folder already matches the defaults. (70f34211c)

Is that part of what lead to the recent vie / preview breakage, which the 2 or 3 point releases only partially fixed?

[meven]

@EatMyShorts

Is that part of what lead to the recent vie / preview breakage, which the 2 or 3 point releases only partially fixed?

No the icon size regression was introduced with the Per-folder zoom feature.

[EatMyShorts]

OK that makes sense. Now you or one of the others mentioned using the slider is per folder now and persistent til manually changed? If so perfect in more ways than one.

[Gortus]

The grouping separate from sort is amazing!! Love the filter bar change as well.

[Xaaeon]

Why did the icon spacing change with this update?

Before update:

After update:

Other filesystem windows still use the original spacing which was better imo.

[ddnnacheta]

See here:

Since the last update, the spacing between icons in Dolphin has been decidedly too small

what was causing it was which, among lots of other changes, changed src/views/dolphinitemlistview.cpp from itemWidth = 48 + IconsModeSettings::textWidthIndex() * 64 * fontFactor * zoomFactor; to itemWidth = 16 + IconsModeSettings::textWidthIndex() * 64 * fontFactor * zoomFactor; Both are magic numbers, both are bad. But changing something like this after years is less than optimal, I can confirm that a good amount of files now have illegible names here, and changing the spacing setting …

From the linked dev comment:

Also make the icon items less wider for better information density.

[EatMyShorts]

The bottom is so much better. I wouldn’t want any less spacing, but less than it was.

[Parsnip]

I wonder if the "A “Folder Name” column in the details view" change had unintended side effects. Or some other change, I’m unsure of the exact time I noticed this.

But anyways at least on my end the search no longer finds everything. Or maybe it finds but doesn’t display? Specifically it seems that if there are files with an exact same name under different subfolders, it will only display the first one it finds.

So for example test folder and file structure:

search_test
--folder1
----file1.txt
----file2.txt
--folder2
----file1.txt
----file2.txt

Searching for file or .txt in the search_test folder will only show the two files in folder1, nothing from folder2. I don’t use indexing so I’m unsure if that would change the results in this case or not.

[ddnnacheta]

@Parsnip

Searching for file or .txt in the search_test folder will only show the two files in folder1, nothing from folder2. I don’t use indexing so I’m unsure if that would change the results in this case or not.

Man… me too. Same issue here.
Just tested it and I also don’t use baloo/indexing.

[Parsnip]

Well at least it’s not just me.

[AdamKafei]

I know it’s completely off-topic and I apologise for it, but what theme is that?

[Yankee]

I just posted the fix for Dolphin’s search on the bug report.

Regression: Simple search fails in Dolphin. It only finds a few of the files.

The problem is in kio, specifically kcoredirlister.cpp which builds libKF6KIOCore.so. The search works perfectly from a command line, but Dolphin doesn’t display the results.

If you know how to compile kio then you can have the fix right now. This bug really should be escalated from “Normal”. I am working on a program for building icon themes so I noticed this issue right off.

Icon themes have tons of duplicates (in name only, not the path) and I spent a good long time wondering why my icon program was not deploying the icons to the folders that they belonged in. Then I manually checked, Dolphin search was broken with the KDE Frameworks 6.29.0 update on CachyOS.

It was removing duplicates based on file name only, totally ignoring the path that showed it was not a duplicate. Mine is working great now and I hope they can get this pushed out pretty quick for everyone.

Thank you to the KDE Team for all that they do and have done for decades!

[Yankee]

I just fixed the squashed Free Space button in Dolphin’s status bar. When using Fusion, Windows 9x or QtCurve application styles, the text was squashed vertically and now it’s perfectly readable. All of the system themes, Breeze, Oxygen, Union etc, still work properly and so does Kvantum.

The issue is in Dolphin’s statusbarspaceinfo.cpp file and plainly marked. It locks the height with -1.

// We reduce the outside margin of the flat button so it visually has the same margin as the status bar text label on the other end of the bar.
    layout->setContentsMargins(2, -1, 0, -1); // "-1" makes it so the fixed height won't be ignored.

I changed that to this.

    layout->setContentsMargins(4, 3, 4, 3);

Recompile Dolphin and you can test with Fusion or QtCurve etc. Here’s the result using QtCurve.