The KDE team has announced Plasma 6.5.4, the fourth bugfix update to the major 6.5 series, which follows three weeks after the previous 6.5.3 release. While no new features are introduced, Plasma 6.5.4 focuses on refinement and reliability.

The release adds updated translations and a long list of targeted fixes. Discover receives several corrections to its Flatpak handling, improving installation management, notifier behavior, and support on aarch64 systems. Headless update scenarios are also addressed, and UI actions now behave consistently across desktop and mobile interfaces.

KWin, the window manager, includes numerous improvements. These range from better handling of input methods and tablet devices to corrections for HiDPI rendering and transformed item painting.

Fixes also cover stuttering in the trackmouse plugin, XRandR emulation, Xwayland iterator safety, sleep inhibition, and repaint scheduling. Additional patches improve the DRM backend, night light updates, and various accessibility keyboard interactions.

Plasma Desktop benefits from a notable fix that prevents icons from shifting to another monitor at startup. The tablet configuration modules gain more reliable device detection, improved button mapping, and clearer warnings for pad-only hardware. Keyboard settings avoid unnecessary reconfigurations, and several Appium-based tests are corrected. The Kicker menu resolves placeholder issues during search.

On top of that, the update enhances multiple supporting components. Libplasma and containment layout managers include memory leak fixes, while libksysguard corrects color grid behavior. Powerdevil improves reporting by including the ddcutil version in crash logs. Print-manager resolves inaccurate marker-level checks for CUPS devices.

Mobile users also see improvements. Plasma Mobile removes recent UI regressions, corrects state transitions in Folio, refines wallpaper handling, and ensures more reliable startup sequences.

KScreen is more resilient when fetching display configurations, and systemd units are now installed in the correct directory. Plasma Dialer receives a reworked call page, better lockscreen logic, improved animations, and additional testing tools.

Other areas, including PipeWire integration, X11 blur plugins, and KDE’s xdg-desktop-portal implementation, receive targeted fixes to improve interoperability across the stack.

For more information, refer to the release announcement or visit KDE Plasma 6.5.4’s full changelog. The next update to the desktop environment, version 6.5.5, is scheduled for release in just over a month, on January 13.

As always, if you’re using a rolling release distribution, keep an eye on your distribution’s repositories—version 6.5.4 is expected to be released there in the coming days or weeks.