The developers behind the KDE Plasma Mobile user interface for Linux phones have announced a series of updates including improvements to the audio controls, home screen, search applet, and application drawer.

Updates to KDE’s “Plasma Mobile Gear” applications including the default web browser, phone dialer, and calendar and contacts app are also now updated on a monthly basis and you can find the details for versions 21.05 for those applications in the release notes.

There are also a couple of new third-party applications.

As I reported in April, developers have also been working to bring support for multiple home screens. The underlying code necessary to make that possible has been merged, but it’s not ready to use yet – right now it’s not actually possible for users to switch between home screens yet. But it should be coming soon.

The audio controls overlay is also a lot more powerful, allowing you to access a bunch of settings including separate volume sliders for:

  • Internal speaker output
  • Headphone output
  • Microphone input
  • Playback streams

That last one includes separate sliders for things like notification sounds and different running applications such as media players or web browser.

Developers have also been working on a new List view (rather than an icon view) for the home screen drawer/application launcher. And the lock screen now has a keyboard toggle that lets you enter letters as well as numbers, allowing you to use alphanumeric passwords as well as PINs.

 

Updated apps include the Dialer which now includes shows contact name and photos for incoming calls rather than the phone number, support for muting yourself and/or switching to speaker phone, and features that let you quickly access your voicemail, check your phone’s IMEI number. The Kalk calculator app now recognizes decimal separates based on your locale settings. The Angelfish web browser now has a web app manager that makes it easier to remove installed web apps. And the Phonebook app has a new toolbar with actions for placing calls or sending SMS or email. This frees up space for more contact information to be displayed in the main screen.

And entirely new apps include  Kasts is a new podcast player with support for showing media controls on the lock screen and notification panel. And Tokodon is a new Mastodon client that offers basic support for reading updates from your timeline and for posting toots and replies. It also supports multiple accounts.

You can find more details in the Plasma Mobile June update blog post.

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