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The KDE Project announced today the release and general availability of KDE Gear 23.04 as a major new series of this open-source software suite for the KDE Plasma desktop environment bringing new apps, new features, and many improvements.
KDE Gear 23.04 brings much-needed updates to the Dolphin file manager like the ability to configure how permissions are shown in the Details view, support for browsing Apple iOS devices using the native afc:// protocol, the ability to run it in superuser mode, and support for showing a document’s number of pages in the metadata display.
The Gwenview image viewer has been beefed up for the Plasma Wayland session allowing users to zoom in and out on images using touchpad pinch gestures, the ability to inhibit sleep and screen locking during a slideshow, more reliable rotating of images, and smooth zooming when using Ctrl + scroll on a touchpad.
The Okular document viewer now comes with a tweaked toolbar layout that includes the View Mode menu and the zoom and view buttons on the left side, while the tools have been placed on the right side, support for relocating the sidebar to either side of the window or turn it into a free-floating window, as well as smooth zooming when using Ctrl + scroll on a touchpad.
The powerful video editor Kdenlive received many goodies as well, most notable being the support for nested timelines, a feature that couldn’t be done without your help. the nested timelines feature lets you treat a group of multiple selected video clips from your tracks as a single sequence.
Also updated in KDE Gear 23.04 is the Kalendar calendar app, which now comes with a completely revamped address book and the ability to define custom reminder times, as well as the Spectacle screenshot and screen recorder app, which has a completely redesigned UI and support for annotating screenshots directly from the rectangular region selection, and built-in screen recording functionality on Wayland.
Also updated is the NeoChat Matrix client, which now has a more compact layout and a simpler menu, improved video controls, new /knock <room-id> command to send a knock event to a room, the ability to edit a prior message inline within the chat pane, as well as improved keyboard navigation.
Both AudioTube YouTube client and Tokodon Mastodon client received some attention in KDE Gear 23.04, such as a redesign and improved compatibility on mobile phones for AudioTube, as well as the ability to see previous messages when replying and send polls to your followers, support for configuring proxies, and a dedicated search page on mobile phones for Tokodon.
Last but not least, KDE Gear 23.04 updates the Elisa music player with a more streamlined look, a tweaked Frequently Played view that shows you a simple list of songs arranged by play count, support for creating and opening .pls playlist files, and support for showing more popular radio stations by default.
Also, the Kasts podcast app now supports minimizing to system tray area, custom playback speeds, and searching through an entire catalog of subscribed podcasts, the Dragon Player media player got a major UI redesign, Kate and KWrite text editor can now open new files in their own window, and the Ark archive manager now supports extracting of Stuffit files.
Moreover, KDE Gear 23.04 improves the PlasmaTube YouTube client to let you access videos through Invidious for increased privacy and updates the Itinerary travel assistant with a complete redesign of the pages showing your travel information.
If you want to enjoy all these new features and improvements in your favorite KDE apps, keep an eye on the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution in the coming days for the KDE Gear 23.04 packages. Meanwhile, check out the full changelog to see all the changes included in this major release.
Last updated 12 months ago
