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

@[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

Will it work X? xd

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

@[email protected] @[email protected] 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

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This will be great for Steam Deck.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

@Hexarei @tonytins

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day 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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Does it work in the desktop mode?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day 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:

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

@[email protected] @[email protected] That's great! Thank you, KDE team! I need this on my laptop that can transform into a tablet and back in runtime.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The Gnome OSK is actually so terrible.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

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

There I fixed it. /s

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

@[email protected] @[email protected]

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

can you rebuild swype

It's a skin for Qt Virtual Keyboard.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This reply was swiped on Futo keyboard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Source-available, in MY floss operating system?

It's less likely than you think!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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!
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In the future, you can generally solve these sorts of build errors by just installing the development package for whatever library is missing. On Debian-based systems, that would be something along the lines of sudo apt install libecm<tab><tab> see what appears, choose one which looks reasonable with -dev suffix

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Thank you.

In this case installing ecm-tools (I use arch) didn't fix it. That was the first thing I tried before making an issue.

It needed extra packages for cmake (refer to the issue for details)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

@[email protected] @[email protected]

thanks!

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

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 day ago