this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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KDE devs have been quietly working on Plasma Keyboard, a new on-screen keyboard for desktop and mobile part of the “We Care About Your Input” KDE Goals initiative. Although not ready for texting yet, it has been making progress. Hopefully it'll be in a screen near you soon. Join the effort!

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-keyboard

#kde #plasma #mobile #osk #accessibility #keyboard

@kde@lemmy.kde.social

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[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Why work on something quietly when you can work on it loudly?

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 27 points 5 days ago (2 children)

This will be great for Steam Deck.

[–] Hexarei@beehaw.org 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

The deck already has a rather good keyboard experience, not sure what this changes

@Hexarei @tonytins

steam deck's keyboard is *themeable*! maybe Plasma themes will work?? 🤞

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 4 points 5 days ago

Still, it's nice to have a native option.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This will be great for Steam Deck.

Won't help Steam Deck if Valve ends up stripping out this keyboard the same way they disabled Maliit.

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

tbf the steam keyboard is great, and is really well suited to the steam deck's touchpads

[–] WaterSword@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Does it work in the desktop mode?

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It does but not automatic. You have to press STEAM-X all the time. It's really not a smooth experience at all.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Huh? The default desktop shortcut for it is just X.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Huh? The default desktop shortcut for it is just X.

X alone doesn't work in many text boxes of desktop apps.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You just press the X button to bring it up. It's independent of text boxes. Works every time for me.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Works every time for me.

Then you use different applications than I. For me X alone only works sometimes. It's not like I made the shortcut up. It's literally what Valve is documenting:

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Do you start some desktop apps through Steam? Then they would get different input mapping.

You can change the key mapping for desktop mode in Steam desktop in the settings. Maybe something's changed for you.

The Steam+* glyphs are always available when Steam is running. Mainly so that you can use them in games.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

This is a great initiative! I tried plasma on a tablet like device a while ago and the keyboard was one of the main issues holding it back.

[–] jdoe@freeradical.zone 15 points 5 days ago

@kde@floss.social @kde@lemmy.kde.social That's great! Thank you, KDE team! I need this on my laptop that can transform into a tablet and back in runtime.

[–] Coelacanthus@lemmy.kde.social 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Will it work well with existed IME like Fcitx5? Or I can choose only one of them?

I see Qt Virtual Keyboard has their own InputMethod implementations, but I think it's not a good idea to re-invent a new IME when there is no obvious advantage, because InputMethod is not a simple thing in some languages like Chinese and Japanese.

For example, libime, the core algorithm library of fcitx5-chinese-addons uses 47k SLOC to implement a good pinyin input method algorithm, even not count the Trigram language model, which is around 30MiB.

As a comparison, the pinyin algorithm of Qt Virtual Keyboard (it seems come from deprecated AOSP's PinyinIME) uses only 8k SLOC. And PinyinIME was give up by AOSP since 2014, it never updates since that time (and no algorithm update since 2009). At 2018, Qt pull it into Qt Virtual Keyboard and never do actual algorithm optimization. So it has fallen away from the time.

[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

"we care about your input" is 180 from gnome's "you're an idiot, and we know what's best for you". I think kde did this on purpose 😂. That's why I never use anything else.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

It's not a competition, and insulting developers who donate their time to open-source is counterproductive.

Use whatever you wish.

[–] vala@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago (3 children)

The Gnome OSK is actually so terrible.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Because it's an OSK, not a touch screen keyboard.

Hopefully someone spends some time developing a proper touch keyboard on GNOME.

[–] vala@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Ehh, it has integrated touch gesture support (at least on fedora) so I feel like it's kind of both.

It's really not THAT bad. The fact that the text prediction at the top changes the position of the keyboard and can't be disabled drives me nuts.

FWIW I use Fedora + Gnome on a touch screen only tablet and it all works well enough.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 4 points 5 days ago

But it works.

Wanted to install OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE as desktop on my Steam Deck without getting a keyboard. Had to use the Gnome Live image because it's the only one with a working keyboard.

[–] kurcatovium@piefed.social 2 points 5 days ago

The Gnome ~~OSK~~ is actually so terrible.

There I fixed it. /s

[–] eldersea@expressional.social 7 points 5 days ago (2 children)

@kde@floss.social @kde@lemmy.kde.social

can you rebuild swype, the only phone keyboard that ever worked worth a damn?

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

can you rebuild swype

It's a skin for Qt Virtual Keyboard.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This reply was swiped on Futo keyboard.

[–] semperverus@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

Source-available, in MY floss operating system?

It's less likely than you think!

[–] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

Idk why all on screen keyboard come without tab key in plasma. I have a laptop while in a tablet mode I can't use terminal at all because there's no tab key.

[–] Anachron@fosstodon.org 5 points 5 days ago

@kde@floss.social @kde@lemmy.kde.social

thanks!

I wouldnt mind funding a great onscreen-keyboard, especially with special keys that make it actually usable (alt, ctrl, shift etc.).

[–] Sina@beehaw.org 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Will it work on X? xd

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 3 points 5 days ago

As long as it has modifier and F keys, accepts mouse input and is manually toggleable I'm happy. Bonus points if I can configure it to show those and number keys per default.

[–] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Edit: issue made and fixed https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-keyboard/-/issues/12

Looks like I need kde-gitlab account fpr making issues.

I couldn't compile it,

cmake ..

-- The C compiler identification is GNU 15.1.1
-- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 15.1.1
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc - skipped
-- Detecting C compile features
-- Detecting C compile features - done
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++ - skipped
-- Detecting CXX compile features
-- Detecting CXX compile features - done
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:8 (find_package):
  By not providing "FindECM.cmake" in CMAKE_MODULE_PATH this project has
  asked CMake to find a package configuration file provided by "ECM", but
  CMake did not find one.

  Could not find a package configuration file provided by "ECM" (requested
  version 6.0.0) with any of the following names:

    ECMConfig.cmake
    ecm-config.cmake

  Add the installation prefix of "ECM" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set "ECM_DIR"
  to a directory containing one of the above files.  If "ECM" provides a
  separate development package or SDK, be sure it has been installed.


-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

It's just a Plasma skin for Qt Virtual Keyboard. Not that this is bad but KDE developers are co-maintainers of Maliit and ended up contributing very little.

[–] pak0st@fosstodon.org 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

@kde@floss.social @kde@lemmy.kde.social hmm... how to resolve this error?

QT\_IM\_MODULES=qtvirutalkeyboard ./bin/plasma-keyboard   
Failed to initialize input panel-shell integration, possibly because compositor does not support the layer-shell protocol  
ASSERT failure in Q\_UNREACHABLE(): "Q\_UNREACHABLE was reached", file /home/pak0stpc/Projects/plasma-keyboard/src/main.cpp, line 292  
Aborted (core dumped) QT\_IM\_MODULES=qtvirutalkeyboard ./bin/plasma-keyboard  

I would like to give it a shot on my system

[–] BlessedDog@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Let's hope it works a bit better with the floating plasma dock than Maliit. Having some weird graphical issues with my current setup.

[–] ducksel@app.wafrn.net -1 points 5 days ago