The beta version of the Plasma 5.25 custom shell is available for testing. You can test the new release through a live build from the openSUSE project and a build from the KDE Neon Testing edition project. Packages for various distributions can be found on this page. The release is expected on June 14th.
Key improvements:
- In the configurator, the page for setting the general theme has been redesigned. You can selectively apply theme elements such as application and desktop style, fonts, colors, window framing, icons, and cursors, as well as separately apply a theme to the splash screen and lock screen interface.
- Added a separate animation effect that is applied when an incorrect password is entered.
- Added a dialog for managing groups of widgets (Containment) on the screen in edit mode, which allows you to visually manage the location of panels and applets in relation to different monitors.
- Added the ability to apply the highlight color of active elements (accent) in relation to the desktop wallpaper, as well as use an accent color for headings and change the tone of the entire color scheme. The Breeze Classic theme has integrated support for coloring titles with an accent color.
- A fading effect has been added to smoothly change between the old and new color schemes.
- Keyboard navigation is enabled in panels and system tray.
- Added a setting to control whether touchscreen control mode is enabled (on x11 systems, you can only enable or disable touchscreen mode by default, and when using wayland, you can additionally automatically switch the desktop to touchscreen mode when a special event occurs from the device). When the touch screen mode is enabled, the indents between the icons in the taskbar are automatically increased.
- Support for floating panels is provided for design themes.
- The position of icons in the Folder View mode is saved with reference to the screen resolution.
- In the list of recently opened documents in the context menu of the task manager, the display of items not related to files is allowed, for example, recent connections to remote desktops can be shown.
- The KWin window manager supports the use of shaders in scripts with the implementation of effects. KWin-scripts KCM translated to QML. A new blending effect has been added and shift effects have been improved.
- Improved support for onscreen gestures. Added the ability to activate overview mode with gestures on the touch screen or touchpad. Added the ability to use gestures anchored to the edges of the screen in scripted effects.
- In the Program Control Center (Discover), the display of permissions for applications in the Flatpak format is provided. The sidebar shows all subcategories from the selected application category.
The page with information about the application has been completely redesigned.
- Added display of information about the selected desktop wallpaper (name, author) in the settings.
- On the system information page (Info Center), the general information in the “About This System” block has been expanded and a new “Firmware Security” page has been added, which, for example, shows whether UEFU Secure Boot is enabled.
- Continued improvement of the session based on the Wayland protocol.
Source: opennet.ru