Plasma/Wayland Known Significant Issues

This page tracks the "Errata/Known issues" that are specific to the the Plasma Wayland session: significant quality-of-life annoyances, significant problems with workarounds, etc. This is part of KDE's Wayland goal.

It is the Wayland-specific companion to Plasma/X11 Known Significant Issues.

Session management

• No session restore for native Wayland windows: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436318. Our session management recovery 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.
• Session-restored XWayland windows go on the wrong screens and virtual desktops: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=468252 + https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421870

KWin/compositing/window management

• When the compositor crashes or restarts, non-Qt apps are killed — Qt apps do stay alive, and work is ongoing to make other apps survive as well; see see https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/wikis/Restarting
• Worse performance on external monitor connected to NVIDIA GPU when default GPU is Intel: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452219
• Native Wayland windows cannot save and restore their window positions; KWin would need to do it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15329
• Picture-in-Picture windows from web browsers get a Task Manager icon and do not stay on top: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=463288; requires https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/132 and adoption in apps using PiP windows (like web browsers)
• Maximized XWayland windows have pixel gaps between screen edges when using a fractional scale factor: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=459373
• "Spare Layouts" feature not implemented: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455431
• Using key combination shortcuts to type phrases into windows is not yet implemented: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478219

Color Management

• Graphics programs that require color accuracy in professional settings such as Krita, GIMP, Scribus, Darktable, Blender, DaVinci Resolve, etc. cannot guarantee accuracy, especially when moving between color spaces like sRGB and CMYK (from digital to print) or Rec. 709 (broadcast TV) until the Color Management and HDR protocol is merged and compositors like KWin implement support for it: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/14
• Calibration/Profiling tools like DisplayCAL and argyllcms are used with colorimeters to ensure monitors are displaying color accurately. A portal (which has not been proposed yet) is required for these tools to be able to calibrate the monitor on Wayland and hand the ICC profile over to the compositor as discussed here. Relevant DisplayCAL issue here: https://github.com/eoyilmaz/displaycal-py3/issues/133

Accessibility

• Can't move pointer with numpad keys: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478620
• Not all Sticky Keys options work: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444335. Input on what is relevant/wanted there is welcome.

Graphics Tablet Support

• Can't fine tune pressure curve of the tablet. Various people draw with varying pressure; some people draw with heavy hand some use light touch. Configuring pressure curve helps artists to get better lines. Bug report and pending Merge Request.
• Can't switch between absolute and relative modes for the graphic tablet. Bug report and Pending Merge Requests 1 and 2.
• Can't assign mouse click presses to pen button as shortcuts, For example you want to change the default and assign a different button on a pen to do middle mouse click to pan the canvas in krita it won't accept middle mouse click as a shortcut- https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=457636
• Can't create multiple profiles for tablet configurations so artists can choose different profiles (e.g. different shortcuts and pen pressure) for different workflows like inking a comic or doing vector art: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477671
• Can't calibrate tablets so there is no weird offset: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476982 This is in the works and there is an open MR by an awesome KDE contributor due for 6.1.
• Can't map a portion of the tablet area to the screen. Some people have large tablet and sometime they want to map a portion of the tablet to the monitor: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=457703.
• The UI for mapping tablet area and its buttons has a few issues compared to the UI in the X11 KCM: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477750
• Graphic tablets may have a touch strip or ring, but in the Wayland KCM, you can't assign shortcuts to touch rings. Bug report: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477752
• Some tablets allow users to switch between touch ring modes. For example, you can click a button and change the mode from one set of shortcuts like scrolling to another set of shortcuts, like changing hue or zooming in and out. This is not possible on Plasma Wayland: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477787
• The pointer for the graphic tablet is permanently a cross in plasma wayland. It doesn't change regardless of context. So if you want to resize a window with your pen, it will be troublesome to use this cursor, as it does not change to a resize handle cursor: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477570.

Plasma

• XWayland applications may not autostart properly in a Wayland session due to various important environment variables not being set: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469839
• Global Menu is not supported for non-Qt apps: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424485
• Installed Chrome apps are grouped together with Chrome windows in Icon-Only Task Manager: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=358277

NVIDIA

• Transient graphical glitches after waking from sleep: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=448866
• Transient graphical glitches after changing themes: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=470503

Upstream

Not yet started

• With screen scaling, cursor size is incorrect when hovering over native Wayland apps written with the GTK toolkit due to its lack of support for the cursor-shape-v1 protocol: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=451158. See also https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=459161 for general cursor size issues.
• With a high DPI mouse, some applications might experience instability or unresponsiveness: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/-/issues/443

Work in progress

• With NVIDIA GPU, Plasma popups (e.g. Kickoff and KRunner) sometimes stops showing after opening / closing them a few times: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455913 / https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/503674 (Fixed in KWin for Qt <= 6.6.2, Fixed in Qt 6.6.3)
• When using a Chromium-based browser in native Wayland mode, dragging an image to the desktop creates a sticky note out of it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449645 / https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/518017 (Fixed in Qt 6.6) + https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/518018 (Not yet merged)
• QtQuick windows exhibit jittery resizing: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477900 - https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/503676 (Work in progress)

Fixed in an upcoming version

• Dialog Parent effect isn't working: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=460819 – Fixed in Plasma 6.1 and Qt 6.8
• Creative applications often use single modifier shortcuts. Artists can map these keys to their pen buttons; for example, holding ctrl to colour pick while painting: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=461259 - Fixed in Plasma 6.1
• When dragging files, to trigger a specific result, you have to hold down a modifier key *before* you start dragging, not after: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=423031 - https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/525413 - Fixed in Qt 6.8