Sem L RaugMar 14
KDE

"This Week in Plasma" brings the news that...

You can use long-presses on your regular keyboard to access alternative glyphs—just like on your phone, e.g. press and hold down [$] and a popup appears that let's you choose between €, £, ¥, ¢, ₹. Also new is that you can download and install alternative sound themes and that we reduced CPU and GPU load for full-screen windows on screens using more fractional scale factors, and much more!

https://blogs.kde.org/2026/03/14/this-week-in-plasma-press-and-hold-for-alternative-characters/

#desktop #FreeSoftware #openSource

Mar 14 at 9:27amWeb
Show threadJRTMar 14
@kde looks like a feature for @pallenberg :D
Show threadvampirdaddyMar 14

@kde @jrt

The longpress-glyph functionality might collide with homerow mods for (alternate) keyboard firmwares.

Show threadJRTMar 14
@vampirdaddy @kde https://xkcd.com/1172/
Workflow

xkcd
Show threadkΔMar 14
@kde what if I just want to type Nooooooooooooooooooooo! Can I still do that? 🤔
Show threadNicolaMar 14
@kDelta @kde Nó
Show threadkΔMar 14
@CryogenicIce9 @kde 🤣
Show threadjoatMar 14
@kde amazing new feature and people are complaining it will interfere with typing things they never type
Show threadKDEMar 14

@joat

It also is not on by default. At the moment you can activate it by downloading a Flatpak and then enabling "Plasma Keyboard"—which can also be disabled if you find it annoying.

There's a whole blog post explaining this:

https://merritt.codes/blog/2026/03/13/2026/_plasma-keyboard-funding-diacritics

Show threadprincess pancake ​Mar 14
@joat @kde It's actually really useful, I have a Mac for work and sometimes need to type Polish or Czech characters, and it works reaaally well
Show threadjoatMar 14
@natty @kde I look forward to it. I currently use the compose key for French characters but having it work like a phone keyboard is a great idea, should reduce cognitive load.
Show threadStomataMar 14
@kde like it!
Show threadsoup2nutsMar 14
@kde 🐧 very clever stuff 🐧
Show threadangelMar 14
@kde pretty dope feature
Show threadBrick DuckMar 14
@kde Wow, fixing that copy-paste error in wxWidgets is great, I have a coworker who uses KiCad on Linux and was affected by this. Great example of open source collaboration!
Show threadpiku    minor!Mar 14
@kde absolute poggers
Show threadHeals Mar 15

@kde has anyone implementing this ever made use of the ancient rite of "key-repeat"? It's great if you want to insert a character multiple times without having to repeatedly press the key.. or.. well.. it was until KDE.

/cc @vyr

Show threadDaniël Franke Mar 15
@heals @kde @vyr Knowing kde, there will be a setting to turn this on and off.
Show threadHeals Mar 15

@ainmosni knowing @kde it'll be named unintuitively, hidden deep in the guts of the settings and the "new cool behaviour" will be on by default..

(And - without looking at the implementation details - the approach feels very EN focussed where most other languages have up to 3 symbols per key I'm not sure a long press is especially useful (hi ISO-Level3 shift: "8, (, {"))

/cc @vyr

Show threadDaniël Franke Mar 15
@heals @kde @vyr Kde has improved loads on settings usability and defaults front, it’s definitely not as messy as it used to be. And it’s nice to actually have options when the default behaviour doesn’t suit you.
Show threadHeals Mar 15
@ainmosni fair I guess but still one of the weirder touchscreen features to adopt given how many things it’ll break just be existing.. (hi, hjkl editor movement)
Show threadDaniël Franke Mar 15
@heals Yeah, which would make me quite surprised if they make it a default, or at least, if it stays default after a beta of it being default.