Plasma/Wayland Known Significant Issues

This page tracks the Wayland showstoppers throughout the stack. Showstoppers are major bugs, or missing features affecting the Wayland session but not the X11 session. This is part of KDE's Wayland goal.

Login/Session management

• Session restoring does not include Wayland native windows: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436318. Our sessions management recover engine is based on the X Session Management Protocol and there is apparently currently no generic concept to do it on Wayland. But on Qt it's plugin-able and GNOME has had their own implementation for some time.
• Windows that *are* session-restored go on the wrong virtual desktops: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421870
• After kwin_wayland crashes and/or restarts, logout screen/actions stops working: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449948

KWin/compositing/window management

• When the compositor crashes or restarts, all apps are killed
• Windows that were closed when maximized will open in the maximized position, but not the maximized state: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=437089
• On Wayland, the compositor doesn't expose the minimized state. Some application and library code currently does things based on that state (usually to show their window again if needed, typically by calling QWidget::isMinimized()). Example: KNotifications' KStatusNotifierItem in KStatusNotifierItemPrivate::checkVisibility(...), invoked e.g. on clicking the item, uses the info to decide client-side whether to request showing the window again (or hide it)

Plasma

• Saving and restoring activities does not work
• Monitor connector names are different across X11 and Wayland, so logging into a Wayland session from X11 breaks multimonitor layout and Plasma configs: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=385135
• XEmbedSNIProxy window eats input in top-left pixel of the screen: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433079
• XWayland-using Chromium web apps show the wrong icon: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=447845
• Task Manager sometimes only show pinned apps, never running ones: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=429168
• When using scaling, scale is reset and re-applied on login, causing various issues: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449212
• Some apps don't appear in Task Manager: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444325
• Panel becomes unresponsive after some amount of time: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449163

System Settings

• Gamma KCM doesn't work/isn't visible
• Graphic tablet KCM is very barebones compared to X11 version: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433045

Drag and Drop issues

• Can't abort drag-and-drop with the Esc key while dropped file is over Plasma panel or desktop: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=405267

Qt/Wayland/app-specific/other upstream or downstream issue

• When using a scale factor, XWayland apps are blurry from being upscaled from the 1x version: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446674; requires https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests/733
• Very blurry fractional scaling for native Wayland windows due to using a downsampled 2x or 3x pixmap: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446674 & https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/issues/34
• No color management: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439135 / https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/14
• KDE app windows don't get brought forward when activated by another KDE app: https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/321246 (in review: ; support will come sometime for Qt 6)
• KDE app windows activated by Electron apps don't get brought forward due to lack of support for the Activation protocol in the toolkit: https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/30912
• Picture-in-Picture windows from web browsers do not stay on top: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/issues/44
• When a notification times out, it closes any context menus that are open and then blocks the next two right-clicks: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=427542 / https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/347783
• Installed Chrome apps do not show up as a unique app but instead assume the Chrome icon, in Icon-Only Task Manager: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=358277
• Wrong positioning of context menu in multiple screens https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-85297 (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436016)