Featuring Do Not Disturb mode and more intelligent history

May 13, 2019 14:38 GMT  ·  By

The upcoming KDE Plasma 5.16 release already promises great new features and improvements for fans of the acclaimed desktop environment used by numerous GNU/Linux distributions.

In his latest weekly report, KDE developer Nate Graham highlights some more of the new features coming to the KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop environment next month, including a completely revamped notification system that will support a Do Not Disturb mode, better support for multi-monitor configurations, and persistent notifications.

The notification history will finally feature grouping while being more intelligent, file transfer operations will also benefit of much-improved notifications, and full-screen applications will show critical notifications. On top of that, the System Settings page was made more usable to allow users to configure everything related to notifications.

"The first thing you’ll notice is that the notifications are much more compact with the icon on the opposite side now and the issuing application prominently displayed. Font sizes have also been streamlined and the heading is now allowed to wrap," said developer Kai Uwe in a blog post. "A major behavior change in the new system is that persistent notifications stay on screen until dismissed."

KDE Plasma 5.16 to enter public beta testing on May 16th

In addition to the revamped notification system, the KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop environment will add support for one-time passwords for VPNs connected via OpenConnect, improve the KWin window manager to no longer crash when a script removes the current virtual desktop, and no longer play the volume level notification sound when muting all sounds.

Other than that, KDE Plasma 5.16 will update the "Connection Activated" notification to no longer appear in the notification history to avoid being cluttered with items that aren't actionable, and the GTK headerbar windows were improved to correctly change their titlebar color on X11 sessions when they are inactive.

The KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop environment will enter public beta testing later this week on May 16th. Early adopters and beta testers will be able to test the upcoming release until its final release on June 11th, 2019. KDE Plasma 5.16 will be a normal release supported with five maintenance updates until September 2019.

Do Not Disturb mode in notifications
Do Not Disturb mode in notifications
Richer notifications for downloads
Richer notifications for downloads
Improved notifications for file transfers
Improved notifications for file transfers
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Improved notification settings
Improved notification settings

KDE Plasma 5.16 (6 Images)

KDE Plasma desktop
Do Not Disturb mode in notificationsRicher notifications for downloads
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