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KDE Gear 22.12 is Here!
Thursday, 8 December 2022
KDE Gear ⚙️ is back with exciting new features, performance boosts, and bugfixes for all your favorite KDE apps!
In this release: Kate extends a warm welcome, Dolphin offers you more choices, and a lot of apps serve up hamburgers galore!
Read on for details...
What's New
Highlights
Dolphin
New Selection Mode
KDE Connect
Inline Message Replies
Dolphin
Dolphin is KDE's powerful file browser. It has supported connecting to and browsing Samba shares for many versions, but now it is also able to manage permissions remotely.
Another new feature is Selection Mode. Hit the spacebar (or tap the hamburger menu and check the Select files and folders checkbox) and a light green bar will appear at the top of the file view (see video). You can now click or tap files and folders and quickly and easily select the ones you want to work with.
Another toolbar will appear at the bottom of the view, giving you options of what you can do with the selected files. For example, if you select only images, it will offer to open them in Gwenview. The moment you select a file Gwenview cannot handle, the options will change to fit the new set of selected files.
Gwenview
Speaking of Gwenview, KDE's feature-rich image and video viewer becomes even... er... feature-richer, as Gwenview now also lets you adjust the brightness, contrast, and gamma of your pictures as you preview them.
Another welcome feature for people who use Free Software graphical editing tools is that Gwenview can now open GIMP's .xcf files.
Kate and KWrite
Kate and KWrite, KDE's text editors, add a welcome window when launched without any files open. The new window lets you create a new file, open an existing file from a list of recent files or anywhere else on the system, and consult the documentation.
But probably the most useful new feature of them all is the Keyboard Macro tool. Activate it in Settings > Configure Kate... > Plugins, and then at the bottom of the Tools menu, you'll find tools to record, save, and play back macros. You can record a long sequence of key presses you need to type often and then hit Ctrl + Alt + K and Kate will type the sequence for you. You can name and save sequences you find particularly useful and use them again and again during different sessions.
In other news, you will find that Kate and KWrite have also adopted KHamburgerMenu for those who prefer to hide their menubars. Because these are large and complex apps, the menubar is still shown by default, like it is in Okular and Kdenlive.
Kdenlive
Kdenlive improves its guide/marker system with custom categories and search filters. Kdenlive also improves its integration with other video applications, and now you can send Kdenlive timelines as backgrounds to the Glaxnimate vector animation utility.
And like many other KDE apps, Kdenlive has also adopted KHamburgerMenu, although by default the regular menu is what you will see the first time you launch the app. If you turn off the normal menubar to gain some vertical real estate, all the menu options will be tucked away under the hamburger menu button in the toolbar.
KDE Connect
KDE Connect links up your phone to your desktop. It allows you to share files and the clipboard, use your phone as a mouse or a remote control, and answer messages from your desktop.
In version 22.12, when you want to reply to a text message using the KDE Connect widget, the text field is now inline rather than in a separate dialog window, making it more convenient to answer when working on your computer.
Kalendar
Kalendar is a new calendaring app from KDE. In the latest update, devs have introduced a new "basic" mode for views. These are ideal for use on low-performance or battery-powered devices, as this mode is not based on swipe gestures like the regular views, but rather presents a more static layout that is easier on the hardware.
Also new is that Kalendar now uses pop-up windows for displaying events, making it easier and more convenient to view and manage your schedule.
Developers have also been busy fixing bugs and improving the performance of Kalendar, so you can expect a smoother and more reliable experience when using the app.
Elisa
Elisa is a friendly music player with a cool, modern look. With version 22.12 Elisa is even friendlier, as it now shows a message explaining what didn't work in case you dragged-and-dropped a non-audio file onto its playlist.
You can also put Elisa into a true full-Screen mode, and the Artist view displays a grid of the artist's albums, rather than a sea of nondescript identical icons.
And all this too
- Kitinerary is KDE's travel assistant. Apart from supporting giving you information about trains, planes and buses, the new version now also supports boats and ferries
- Kmail is an advanced email client. The latest version comes with improvements that make it easier to use encryption for email messages.
- If your keyboard has a "Calculator" button, pressing it will now open KCalc, KDE's full-featured calculator app.
- Spectacle is a screenshot application that is simple by default, but powerful when needed that supports all sorts of screen-capturing modes, annotations, editing, and more. The new version of Spectacle now remembers the last-chosen rectangular region area by default, even across app launches.
- You use Ark to easily create, open, explore and extract files from compressed archives. In version 22.12, Ark adds ARJ to its roster of supported compression formats. Ark has also adopted KHamburgerMenu for a cleaner, simpler look.
Full changelog here
Where to get KDE Apps
Although we fully support distributions that ship our software, KDE Gear 22.12 apps will also be available on these Linux app stores shortly:
If you'd like to help us get more KDE applications into the app stores, support more app stores and get the apps better integrated into our development process, come say hi in our All About the Apps chat room.
Note that packages of this release might not be available on all distributions at the time of this announcement. Package download wiki page
Compiling KDE Gear
The complete source code for KDE Gear 22.12.0 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing are available from the KDE Gear 22.12.0 Info Page.
About KDE
KDE is an international technology team that creates free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. Among KDE's products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites and hundreds of software titles in many categories including Internet and web applications, multimedia, entertainment, educational, graphics and software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60 languages and is built with ease of use and modern accessibility principles in mind. KDE's full-featured applications run natively on Linux, BSD, Windows, Haiku, and macOS.
Trademark Notices.
KDE® and the K Desktop Environment® logo are registered trademarks of KDE e.V..
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.
All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.
Press Contacts
For more information send us an email: press@kde.org
Article contributed by Paul Brown, Carl Schwan, Aron Kovacs, and Nate Graham under the CC-BY-4.0 license.