Welcome to a new issue of “This Week in Plasma”! Every week we cover the highlights of what's happening in the world of KDE Plasma and its associated apps like Discover, System Monitor, and more.
It’s cool to see that, on top of all the bug-fix and feature development work, contributors are also thinking about the discoverability of existing features - like the new Animations page, or even the Weather Report suggestion.
When your microphone is muted and an application tries to use it, Plasma will now display an OSD reminding you that it’s muted, so you don’t confusingly wonder why no one can hear you. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
This one seems like a fantastic quality-of-life improvement for anyone who has the joy of conference calls in their work!
Nate, could you please post some update about apps (KDE Gear at least) supporting the new session restore? Will we have with Plasma 6.4 a semi working real session restore supported by apps?
…wait. So, despite the fact that I’m in the „System tray“ settings, where I’m just supposed to adjust the icons in the tray to my need — this is disabling the actual service? heck, this is hella unexpected!
Now I’m curious: does this apply to other services as well, or is this just a Klipper phenomenon? 
Regardless, it’s nice to see a warning now!!
For the clipboard, it does disable the actual system service. Various others are similar (e.g. Notifications); there’s really no consistency here, since each icon is backed by something completely different under the hood.
There are some cases where over time, we have made the system services keep running when the icon is disabled, e.g. in the case of Audio Volume. It used to be that if you disabled this, you’d lose the ability to change the volume using the volume buttons on the keyboard.
Ultimately I think this is the path forward, people people expect that this config UI is really just about the icons themselves, not the system services underpinning them.
I got tired of failing Duolingo speak lessons because my microphone was muted haha
Regarding notifications there, if you have two system trays (one per monitor) and you disable the notifications on one, are you saying that disables the entire service, so it won’t appear 9n either?
I haven’t tested this, but I remember disabling it on my secondary monitor, because they always would show there, even when focus was on my primary. But I’ve recreated my panels since then, so likely it’s on both now.
But disabling it globally definitely isn’t expected behaviour there.
IIRC as long as one is running, the service is active. However having two is sort of undefined behavior since by default, notifications try to appear by the panel icon. Well, which one? 
Newly-installed applications are now visually highlighted in the Kickoff application launcher! (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
I really like the compact “dot” indicator in categories. Did you consider something similar for apps? To me the “New!” label is to flashy/distracting.
There is always only one service. In case of multiple notification applets there’s a priority list. Generally the primary monitor wins over others. And panel applets are preferred over desktop ones.
I think a dot isn’t very descriptive, hence the “New”. Just launch the app once and it goes away (or wait 3 days).
So I guess we need to clarify this in the UI, then? Right now it’s not clear what happens.
Ideally we let the user choose where to show them and/or or restore the ability to have popups on multiple/all screens.
Yeah, that could make sense. The UI could get complex though, since not all screens might have a notification icon, so the “Near notification icon” setting would have to be qualifies a lot.
With a custom position, it could look like this:
Popup
Location: ( ) Near notification icon
(o) [Custom…]
With multiple screens: (o) Only on the Primary screen
( ) On the screen with the pointer
( ) On all screens
Whereas with the default “Near notification icon” setting, I’m having trouble envisioning a clear UI due to the number of combinations. What if the user has two screens but only one has a notification icon? If they want the popup to appear on both screens, where on the second one does it appear?
The UI could get complex though, since not all screens might have a notification icon, so the “Near notification icon” setting would have to be qualifies a lot.
Situation gets even more complicated if we take into account notification widget. Unfortunately, it’s not really replacement for disabled System Tray item (notification won’t appear near widget, also widget can’t be activated with the keyboard shortcut). So to me “Near System Tray” sounds more correct than “Near notification icon”.
Congratulations on the work, it’s a point where Plasma deserves attention and needs to evolve! A modern interface while maintaining visual consistency is having identity! While on the subject, please substitute the two monochrome icons from the timer settings window, focus on visual consistency!
notification won’t appear near widget
It does for me – three notification icons (two tray, one standalone widget), and the notification appears near the standalone widget (with the setting to “near icon”).
also widget can’t be activated with the keyboard shortcut
It can, but there’s no interface to set it, you’d have to manually add it into appletsrc.
We manually hide the default widget configuration dialog from the context menu for some (but not all) widgets that do not have a dedicated configuration page, but that makes it hard to set a keyboard shortcut for such widgets (or, for that matter, to see their About info page). This has annoyed me before (I want to have a shortcut for my standalone Kate sessions widget). We could add it back and rename it to “Configure Shortcut” or similar. Feel free to open a thread or issue about this.
I am still hoping for the good old PRIMARY clipboard contents making it back into klipper/clipboard, having two separate clipboards for e.g. username and password or other keys and values was so neat and is heavily missed (Functionality is still there in general, just not in klipper)
Amazing work as always. It would be lovely to see the cube animation return to the desktop switching effect. (I’m aware there’s a separate cube effect that isn’t tied to anything, but this is about the animation for switching virtual desktops).
It was removed years ago, still hoping it comes back. Is there a chance this will happen? It was great for visualising virtual desktops in a 3d space.
I think the ‘NEW’ tag is kind of obnoxious looking when installing a lot of applications. Back in the old KDE days there was a custom menu replacement (I forgot what it was called) and in that one any new application would have a slight dark yellow colour before it was first launched. Come to think of it, this was just like in a certain redmond based operating system.
Point it, a label like the one shown off here looks kind of ugly, a slight tint as the background would seem better to me.
