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KDE Plasma developers have announced the release of Plasma 6.7 Beta, giving testers an early look at the features and desktop improvements planned for the stable release scheduled on June 16.
One of the most notable additions in Plasma 6.7 is the revival of Plasma Bigscreen as a dedicated module. Designed for TVs and living-room environments, Plasma Bigscreen adapts KDE technologies for large displays and remote-controlled navigation.
The beta release also introduces the Union style engine as an experimental module. In this initial public preview, Union provides styling support for QML and Kirigami applications whenever the required union package is installed. KDE has additionally expanded virtual keyboard customization options, allowing users to decide what actions should automatically trigger the keyboard.
Screen capture privacy settings have also been enhanced. The per-window privacy option that previously blocked screencasts will now prevent windows from appearing in screenshots as well. To better reflect its broader functionality, KDE has updated the naming of this feature.
Another improvement focuses on applications requesting access to input devices. Plasma 6.7 adds a permanent authorization option so users no longer need to repeatedly approve trusted applications.
The Discover software center gains a usability upgrade in this release. Its “Installed” section now organizes software into categories by default, making navigation easier on systems with a large number of installed packages and components.
Notification behavior has also been refreshed visually. Instead of fading into view, notifications in Plasma 6.7 now slide onto the screen from the edge of the desktop.
KDE has refined several smaller desktop interactions as well. The Kickoff launcher now handles rapid searches and Enter key presses more reliably, Gwenview becomes the default SVG image viewer, smart card unlock handling has been improved, and the “Keep Above Others” action is now easier to access from the window titlebar menu.
For widgets, Plasma 6.7 introduces a light and dark mode switch within the Brightness & Color widget, a global push-to-talk shortcut, a shortcut for clearing notification history, easier emoji skin-tone selection, and more flexible sorting and grouping options in the Window List widget.
On the system side, KDE has simplified the setup process for printers shared from Windows systems and added support for the ext-background-effect-v1 Wayland protocol. The beta release also officially includes the plasma-bigscreen and union modules.
Remote desktop functionality has received additional upgrades as well. KDE’s integrated remote desktop server now supports progressive encoding when H.264 is unavailable or less efficient, alongside various latency and performance improvements. Plasma 6.7 also adds support for version 3.2 of the Wayland Text Input protocol.
As with most beta software, KDE notes that Plasma 6.7 Beta is intended strictly for testing and development purposes rather than production systems. Users interested in trying the preview release can install it through KDE neon Testing Edition, which provides access to upcoming KDE software builds before stable release.
