KDE Plasma 6.5 brings a better way to handle app permissions

This week's "This Week in Plasma" entry came a little earlier than usual and is slightly shorter, possibly because KDE devs are preparing for Akademy 2025. Nevertheless, we still saw the usual slew of UI improvements, bug fixes, and new features.

In Plasma 6.5, the "Flatpak Permissions" page in System Settings has expanded into a more general "Application Permissions" page. This addresses a long-standing issue with sandboxed applications. When apps running in Flatpak or Snap need special permissions to access something like the camera, xdg-desktop-portal prompts the user.

Previously, once you granted a permission, there was no central place to see or revoke it. The new settings page will now let you review these permissions, with options to pre-authorize requests or force a confirmation dialog every single time. It even allows you to manage saved screen casts and remote desktop sessions.

As for window focus stealing prevention, the settings on the Window Behavior page now do "sensible things on Wayland." You now have five options to configure how aggressively the system prevents windows from grabbing your attention.

At one end of the spectrum is "Extreme," which requires a valid activation token for every single focus request. At the other is "None," which just allows any application to take focus unconditionally. The default setting is "Low," which should lead to fewer failed activations while still keeping applications in check.

"Medium" and "High" offer intermediate steps, allowing activation if the last keyboard interaction was the enter key, so launching applications from a terminal still works correctly.

Other UI improvements coming to Plasma 6.5 include Discover now providing more detailed feedback about what it is doing while fetching updates, so you can tell which software source is slowing things down.

The monospace fonts you select in the Fonts settings page will now correctly sync to GTK applications, creating a more consistent look. In addition to that, KWin's blur effect has been made per-view, which improves how it looks when you are screencasting your desktop.

The team also worked on bug fixes for both Plasma 6.4.5 and Plasma 6.5. A notable fix in 6.4.5 improves the reliability of how screen settings are chosen and restored. For the upcoming 6.5 release, a fix prevents the Night Light feature from distorting colors in screenshots and screen recordings.

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Posted Saturday 6 September 2025 at 6:39 pm AEST (my time).

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