Good news for KDE Plasma users: this dead feature is finally being resurrected

KDE Plasma developers have announced that a feature first introduced in 2020 and later killed is making its way back in a future version of the desktop environment.

This week, KDE's developers worked on bringing back the ability to long-press physical keys to access characters and symbols kind of like the layouts you find on mobile keyboards.

This feature is finally re-launching in Plasma 6.7 as part of the brand new Plasma Keyboard module. You would be able to turn it on by navigating to System Settings > Keyboard > Virtual Keyboard.

Other features to expect in Plasma 6.7 include the ability to install custom sound themes from downloaded files and a cleaner USB printer notification system. Users will also get to configure the Global Menu widget to display menus for active windows located on completely different screens.

Developers initially planned "Press-and-Hold for Alternative Characters" for Plasma 5.21 by merging the necessary code in December 2020. Even at that time, the devs warned that the tool faced problems. The programmers noted that "a few bits are still remaining, including full integration with GTK apps, and compatibility with other input methods."

But by the time the team released Plasma 5.21 in March 2021, users discovered the feature was completely missing because underlying technical issues with Qt input methods forced developers to revert the code.

Other changes coming to the Plasma Keyboard include swipe typing and vocal dictation tools. You can also expect a fully resizable on-screen interface.

Plasma 6.6.3 is expected to land next Tuesday (17th March), with several UI improvements, including a polished "Add Widgets" sidebar that maintains accurate item counts. You will also get a much better pixel-aligned magnifier tool inside the Spectacle screenshot app. The team also improved the Clipboard widget so it no longer generates broken QR codes for non-text items.

As for the bug fixes, Plasma 6.7 will ship with a fix (finally!) for the situation where multiple Electron applications like Discord all register the exact same system tray identifier, causing them to follow each other's settings. The 6.6.3 update also works around a bug in Samsung LS24D60xU monitors where the hardware enters a loop and starts to turn on and off without any user input.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Sunday 15 March 2026 at 5:17 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of February) 854

RIP Matrix