Today marks the official release of the KDE Plasma 6.3 desktop environment, showcasing several key enhancements and features. Among the highlights are the ability to clone panels, improved fractional scaling, and the capability to remember the active virtual desktop per activity. Additionally, users can now check battery cycle counts on their laptops directly in the Info Center.
A range of improvements has been made to the KWin window manager. It now intelligently selects a default scale factor for small screens and offers an automatic scaling feature that rounds to the nearest 5%. Users can also briefly disable KWin window rules without needing to delete them.
KDE Plasma 6.3 introduces low battery notifications for compatible wireless headphones, touchpad configuration options to disable when a mouse is plugged in, and keyboard shortcuts to transfer windows between custom tiling areas based on direction.
Desktop widgets have received a subtle update, becoming slightly translucent. The network hotspot feature now assigns random passwords by default. Users will also receive notifications when the system runs low on memory, detailing what happens when the kernel terminates an app to manage resources.
Notably, KDE Plasma now provides a single notification summarizing missed alerts during "Do Not Disturb" mode. Other enhancements include an updated Weather widget that refreshes upon network reconnection and improved color accuracy for the Night Light feature when using an ICC profile.
The Plasma Discover package manager has also been updated to support opening flatpak:/ URLs, inform users of developer-packaged apps, and accurately display installation progress for applications requiring new Flatpak runtimes. The Task Manager in Plasma 6.3 now accurately reflects grouping indicators per the current accent color and supports symbolic icons in the system tray.
Users can enjoy additional functionality with the new “Show Target” option for symbolic links, GPU statistic collection through the Plasma System Monitor app on FreeBSD systems, and consistent close button designs across KDE applications.
Further refinements include improved Task Manager previews, a visual world map for selecting time zones in the Date & Time settings, and appropriately sized avatar selection dialogs for user accounts. Users can also quickly access the “Save Session” action in the Kickoff launcher and others immediately without rebooting.
For more details, visit the release announcement page and check for updates in stable software repositories to install KDE Plasma 6.3.