The Dev Log: April 2024 - June 2025
Updates in the project in 2024 and the first half of 2025
The Plasma Mobile team is happy to announce the developments in the project over the past few months!
Housekeeping
This blog post was completed much later than originally planned. In the meantime, several releases have taken place:
- Plasma 6.1 (June 2024) changelog
- Plasma 6.2 (October 2024) changelog
- Plasma 6.3 (February 2025) changelog
- Plasma 6.4 (June 2025) changelog
This blog post is already quite long, so it will omit changes merged for Plasma 6.5 (releasing in October, to be announced in a future post).
With the Plasma 6.2 release, we moved Plasma Dialer and Spacebar to the Plasma release cycle, allowing us to have consistent releases of the two apps. This completes our year long move to having all Plasma Mobile related projects released as part of wider KDE releases, streamlining the work for distributions and taking a load off us on having to maintain a separate release cycle!
In other news, a Fedora spin for Plasma Mobile was released! It will only be targeting devices that can currently boot Fedora (i.e. not ARM phones), but is very exciting nonetheless! Read more about it here, and get it here.
Plasma Sprint
In May, we attended the Plasma developers' sprint in Graz, Austria! Read more about what we did from the blogs below:
NGI0 Core (NLnet) funding
Bhushan recently received funding through the NGI0 Core Fund to work on the power management stack on Plasma Mobile (and Plasma as a whole)!
You can read more about this on his blog. The project details are described here.
CI
Bart added an Alpine CI to KDE infrastructure, allowing for KDE projects to ensure they build correctly for Alpine before release!
Plasma
Work continues on from the Plasma 6 release! Only major features and improvements are described below, see the Plasma release notes for the full list of changes.
Task Switcher
Luis worked on bringing back gestures to the task switcher! The implementation now uses KWin's gesture API, and has several new features over the Plasma 5 implementation:
- Swiping up fast from the bottom of the screen minimizes the app and goes to the homescreen.
- Swiping up and holding from the bottom of the screen keeps the task switcher open.
- Swiping left and right on on the bottom of the screen allows for scrubbing through the currently opened apps.
- Haptic feedback occurs during the opening gesture if releasing will open the task switcher.
(Luis Büchi, Plasma 6.2, Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5, Link 6)
Micah further improved and refined the task switcher and gesture tracking, polishing the flow of animations and activation thresholds. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.2.1, Link)
Devin added support for the tasks to be sorted by last activation. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2, Link)
Luis added support for double tapping on the task switcher button to switch between the two most recently used apps. (Luis Büchi, Plasma 6.3, Link)
Lockscreen
The lockscreen keypad design was overhauled to use a more traditional PIN layout. It is much simpler to render and is also easier to use with one hand. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2, Link)
Various issues with input unresponsiveness were also fixed, as well as support for passwordless login. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2, Link 1, Link 2, Link 3)
The clock design was also overhauled to be larger and blend better with the wallpaper. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.2, Link)
Quick action buttons were also added, which are configurable to allow actions (ex. flashlight toggle) be easily accessed while the device is locked. (User8395 & Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.4, Link 1, Link 2)
Notifications
Popup notifications were fully implemented, with a refreshed look and the capability to show multiple notifications in a "stack". (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.3, Link)
Scrolling through an overflowing notifications list was fixed. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.4, Link)
Various issues with the notification widget were also fixed:
- Job notifications now show up properly and are dismissable.
- Notification contents are now properly clipped as they are being dismissed.
(Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2, Link)
Homescreen (Folio)
Work continued on fixing and polishing issues in the default homescreen introduced in Plasma 6, here are some highlights:
- A search bar was added to the applications list. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2, Link)
- Support for touchpad interaction was added. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2, Link)
- An option was added to be able to lock the homescreen layout from editing. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.4, Link)
- State being shared between multiple displays was fixed. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.1.3, Link 1, Link 2)
- The settings view is now closed when the home button is pressed. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.1.5, Link)
- A button was added in the wallpaper selector to see the full wallpaper config window. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.1.2, Link)
- A dialog was added to ask the user to confirm when deleting a folder. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2, Link)
- Application icons resizing to only predefined sizes was fixed. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2, Link)
- When an application gets deleted, user placed icons of it are also removed. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.4, Link)
- Haptics were added to various actions on the homescreen. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.4, Link)
- Widgets no longer activate a popup when being held to be edited. (Florian Richer, Plasma 6.4.1, Link)
Homescreen (Halcyon)
Devin fixed situations where the favourited applications may not activate when tapped. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.1.4, Link)
Action Drawer
An expanded mode to the music widget when tapped was added, that allows for the song position to be changed. (Florian Richer & Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.2, Link 1, Link 2, Link 3)
The action drawer can now be opened even when an application is fullscreen. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.3, Link)
An "overscroll" animation when the panel is fully open and the finger overshoots was added. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.2, Link)
A marquee for quick setting titles was added, fixing eliding with certain languages. (Athozus, Plasma 6.2, Link)
Quick settings are now hidden when they are not applicable, such as for mobile data when there is no modem. (User3895, Plasma 6.3, Link)
The order of quick settings after being adjusted from the settings is now fixed. (Florian Richer, Plasma 6.4.1, Link 1, Link 2, Link 3)
The action drawer panel now hides when screen brightness is adjusted, making it easier for the user to gauge the brightness they would like. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.3, Link)
A quick setting was added to be toggle whether all applications are shown in fullscreen (panels can be shown when swiping from the top/bottom). (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.4, Link)
The screen recording quick setting is now properly ported to Plasma 6 and has been brought back. (Florian Richer, Plasma 6.2, Link)
Status Bar
The status bar height can now be resized in the settings. (Sebastian Kugler, Plasma 6.3, Link)
The status bar can now be swiped down to be shown when in a fullscreen application. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.3, Link)
A config option was added to toggle showing the battery percentage label. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.4, Link)
An optional setting to also show the date in the status bar along with the time was added. (Athozus, Plasma 6.2, Link)
Volume Popup
The design of the volume popup was overhauled, and now made to not take away focus from the currently shown application window. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.3, Link)
Manual Rotation Button
A button was added to the navigation panel to manually rotate the screen to the current orientation when auto-screen rotation is disabled. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.3, Link)
A floating button with the same functionality was added to gesture mode. (Micah Stanley, Plasma 6.4, Link)
Startup Feedback
Devin overhauled the startup feedback implementation, which is the animation that shows when an application is opening:
- Windows states are now being tracked to determine when to close it, fixing issues where it would close prematurely due to losing focus.
- Startup feedback now shows up in the task switcher as a window.
- A spinner was added which is shown when applications take longer to load.
- Multiple displays are now properly supported.
- The background color algorithm was improved to tint colors darker in dark modes, avoiding a blinding flash when application icons are bright.
(Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2, Link 1, Link 2, Link 3)
Settings
The settings application is now organized into categories. (Devin Lin, Plasma Settings v25.02, Link)
A toggle was added to force showing all settings modules, even ones that are not for mobile. (Devin Lin, Plasma Settings v25.06, Link)
A traffic monitor was added to the Wi-Fi settings module for the current network connection. (Sebastian Kugler, Plasma 6.3, Link)
A vendor information card was added to the Information settings module. (Sebastian Kugler, Plasma 6.3, Link)
Some issues with setting up mobile data connections with iPv6 were fixed. (Florian Richer, Plasma 6.2, Link)
Other
Windows will not longer be able to be unmaximized outside of docked mode, especially applicable to GTK applications. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.3, Link)
There is now an option for distributions to manually disable the logout button from the shutdown screen. (Sebastian Kügler, Plasma 6.3, Link)
Applications
Most major announcements for applications are now covered in the This Week in KDE Apps series on the main blog.
However, some mobile specific updates will still be shared here!
Angelfish (Web Browser)
Micah greatly overhauled the tab list and search bar UI/UX on mobile! New features include:
- Swiping up on the search bar now opens the tab list.
- Swiping up again closes the tab list.
- The tab list is now a fullscreen grid, with improved opening and closing animations.
- The search bar now gives a URL preview when minimized during scrolling, and touching it maximizes it.
(Micah Stanley, KDE Gear 24.08, Link 1, Link 2)
Dialer
Bhushan investigated and worked with KWin maintainers to fix a major issue where a ghost dialer window would sometimes be on top of the lockscreen. (Vlad Zahorodnii & Bhushan Shah, Plasma 6.3.5, Link)
Bhushan and Luis investigated and fixed an issue where a single incoming call may be treated as multiple calls on dual-SIM devices. (Bhushan Shah, Plasma 6.3.5, Link)
Spacebar (SMS Messenger)
Various lockup and sending/receiving issues were fixed by having the client communicate to the database solely through the server, rather than having the server and client simultaneously access it. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2.1, Link)
Outgoing messages sending a notification to the user was fixed. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.3, Link)
A message in the UI now shows up if the Spacebar daemon is not running. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2.1, Link)
A ModemManager mocking program for SMS was created to more easily develop Spacebar without a working modem setup (as Devin encountered). (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.3, Link)
The "new chat" page UX was redesigned to be easier to understand. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.3, Link)
SMS chat conversations can no longer be started with contacts that have no phone numbers. (Florian Richer, Plasma 6.2, Link)
Discover (Application Store)
The apk backend (for Alpine/postmarketOS) was integrated into the project, which was previously carried as a large patch downstream. This allows it to be more easily iterated on and to be improved in the future. (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.2, Link)
An Alpine CI was added to KDE infrastructure, and hooked up the apk backend to be tested. (Bart Ribbers, Plasma 6.2, Link)
QMLKonsole (Terminal)
The modifier panel can now be manually enabled/disabled by the user, regardless of whether they are on mobile or desktop. (Om Mehta, KDE Gear 25.08, Link)
The warning for closing a tab with a running task was fixed for window closing events. (Mason Jiao, KDE Gear 24.08, Link)
The keyboard not popping up when tapping the terminal area, and the keyboard button were both fixed. (Devin Lin, KDE Gear 24.08, Link)
Clock
Kai took a deep dive into the app, adding new features and polishing the UX! Here are some highlights:
- Timers now have a persistent notification to indicate status when the app isn't open. (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Gear 25.08, Link)
- Timers can now be edited directly without having to be recreated. (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Gear 25.08, Link)
- Timers can now be started, paused and reset from KRunner. (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Gear 25.08, Link)
- The time page now has an analog clock. (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Gear 25.08, Link)
Contributing
Do you want to help with the development of Plasma Mobile? We are a group of volunteers doing this in our free time, and are desperately looking for new contributors, beginners are always welcome!
See our community page to get in touch!
We are always happy to get more helping hands, no matter what you want to do, but we especially need support in these areas:
- Telephony (Calling and SMS)
- Camera
- App development (Photo Viewer, Browser, Audio Recorder, Games, etc.)
- Shell work
- You can also check out our Plasma Mobile issue tracker for more details.
Even if you do not have a compatible phone or tablet, you can also help us out with application development, as you can easily do that from a desktop!
Take Plasma Mobile for a spin! Check out the device support for each distribution and find the version which will work for your device.
If you have any further questions, view our documentation, and consider joining our Matrix channel. Let us know what you would like to work on or where you need support to get going!
Our issue tracker documentation also gives information on how and where to report issues.