KDE Plasma 6.9 development introduces new weather widget and on-screen keyboard
Key Takeaway
The upcoming Plasma 6.9 release features a redesigned weather widget with Open-Meteo support and a heavily reworked on-screen keyboard.
Summary
While Plasma 6.8 has recently launched, development on Plasma 6.9 is progressing with significant feature updates. Key improvements include a new Weather Report widget layout, an expanded on-screen keyboard with modifier key support, and enhanced Night Light scheduling. Additionally, Qt 6.13.0 introduces font hinting for high scale factors.
Key updates in Plasma 6.9 and Qt 6.13.0
- Weather Report widget: New layout providing hourly temperature and precipitation forecasts using Open-Meteo.
- On-screen keyboard: Now supports full-size layouts including arrow and modifier keys, a Japanese flick keyboard, and locale-independent layouts.
- Night Light: Added capability to temporarily enable or disable the feature outside of the standard schedule.
- Qt 6.13.0: Implements font hinting when the scale factor is set above 100%.
- UI/UX: System Tray icons can now be configured to a smaller size, and KRunner search fields have improved power-related item detection.
Why it matters
These updates improve accessibility via the improved on-screen keyboard and enhance desktop usability through more granular control over system features like Night Light and weather data.
Original reference: blogs.kde.org →