These are the most exciting features in Plasma 6.8, out now
When the KDE Plasma desktop 6.8 gets here on October 14, you can look forward to more screen recording and system monitoring features.
The KDE Plasma desktop environment is continuing to see rapid development, and Plasma 6.8 is no exception. These are the most interesting enhancements and changes to expect when you upgrade.
Last update: October 14, 2026
What's new
Trying out the Plasma 6.8 beta. Forgive the bad frame rate, it's VirtualBox's fault.
- Screen recordings with audio: KDE's screen capturing app, Spectacle, now has the ability to record audio along with video screen recordings.
- You can choose system audio so the sound from whatever app or game you're recording gets captured, or microphone audio so you can record yourself speaking. You can also enable both at the same time.
- Higher quality screen recordings: You now have a slider for adjusting video quality in Spectacle's screencast feature, and the quality in general has been optimized.
- Screen lock on remote disconnect: If you connect to your Plasma desktop via the built-in remote desktop tool, you now have the option to force the desktop to lock when the last client disconnects.
- Bi-directional remote clipboards: When you use Plasma's native remote implementation "KRdp," the clipboard on both the server and client devices are now unified. Previously, only the server's clipboard was shared, one-way, to the client.
- System Monitor CPU affinity settings: In the System Monitor app, you can set processes' "CPU affinity" to specific processor cores (or just a single core) you want a given process to run on.
- This is a power user feature for those wanting fine-tuned control of processes. If you aren't sure what you're doing or why, then I wouldn't mess with these settings.
- Middle button scroll: You can now press the scroll wheel on your mouse to activate an "autoscroll" mode that scrolls up or down depending on the direction you move your mouse. This is similar to Windows' middle-click scrolling.
What's getting better
- VRAM monitoring: Previously, KDE's System Monitor app could only show you a total amount of VRAM being used (for example, 1.2GB). Now, System Monitor has a sensor showing the percentage of VRAM consumption the same way it shows a percentage of regular RAM, getting you a clearer picture of your resource limits.
- Stylus support: Desktop overlays, including Overview and Custom Tiling, can now be manipulated and interacted with using stylus pens.
- Nvidia GPU rendering: Triple-buffering, a feature that enabled smoother visuals and that had been disabled because of bug reports, will be enabled by default for those with Nvidia graphics cards.
- The emoji selector: The grid of emoji in the emoji selector now has resizing controls.
Source: KDE Blogs
- External GPU performance: A fix to the way multi-GPU systems are handled means external graphics cards get a performance boost of up to 80 percent in Plasma 6.8 under certain conditions.
- Accessibility: A new "dwell clicker" accessibility feature automatically clicks links that you hover over for a preset amount of time, similar to GNOME's "click support" feature.
- Update resource usage: Previously, the Discover app would consume a large amount of memory just to tell you that updates are available. This has been resolved.
What's going away
- X11: As of Plasma 6.8, the X11 display server will no longer be supported at all, making Wayland the only way to use the desktop. The XWayland compatibility layer will still be available for continued use of X11 apps.
- If you don't know what this means, then this change probably won't affect you. It's only relevant to those who need to switch to an X11 session on Plasma just to run specific (typically, old) software.
Jordan Gloor
Zooming out
Why Plasma 6.8 matters: KDE Plasma is one of the most popular desktop environments, supported across open source operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD, and more. Changes to Plasma have effects on a wide swath of FOSS enthusiasts, and to hardware platforms that utilize it like the Steam Deck.
My take: I'm most excited about the audio screen recordings. That'll make it easier to show friends what's neat about Linux desktops like Plasma. Also, the memory bug with Discover has annoyed me in the past, so I'm glad I'm getting my RAM back.
Diving in
The fineprint: You can read more details in the official Plasma 6.8 release announcement. Otherwise, the full technical 6.8 changelog gives you a more detailed look.
KDE
Get it now: If you're using a rolling release Linux distribution like CachyOS or Garuda Linux with KDE Plasma as the desktop environment, you should see Plasma packages updated to 6.8 soon. Standard release distros like Kubuntu, though, will have to wait a while before Plasma 6.8 gets shipped.
