KDE shipped KDE Gear 26.08 on August 20, 2026 — the quarterly apps collection that bundles every KDE application outside of the Plasma desktop shell itself. This release is particularly significant: it arrives as KDE approaches its 30th anniversary in October, and it introduces KeepSecret, the suite's first native password manager.
KeepSecret: KDE Finally Has a Password Manager
For a desktop environment that ships file managers, terminal emulators, document viewers, and video editors, the absence of a password manager was always a conspicuous gap. KeepSecret fills it. It is the first net-new addition to the KDE Gear package set since the project adopted its current naming convention, making it a genuine landmark rather than just another point release novelty.
Kdenlive Gets the Biggest Editing Upgrade in Years
The video editor receives the most substantive changes in this cycle. According to the official announcement, three major effect widgets land simultaneously:
- Curves filter with per-channel RGB adjustment — the kind of precision color tool that previously required exporting to DaVinci Resolve.
- Gradient Map filter supporting up to 32 color stops, enabling cinematic grade effects directly on the timeline.
- Speed Ramp widget expanded with 13 MLT easing options, so speed ramps can follow smooth acceleration curves rather than hard cuts.
Timeline workflow also improves: you can now copy a selection into a new sequence, and audio tracks auto-generate as clips are dropped — two longstanding workflow friction points that professional editors have complained about for years.
The Titler gains copy-paste for objects, rounded corners for rectangles, and smart snapping to screen edges and other items — small quality-of-life fixes that add up quickly in title card work.
Dolphin, Okular, and Konsole Round It Out
The Dolphin file manager deepens its KDE Connect integration: a dedicated button now appears at the top of the window when browsing a connected phone, letting you launch the KDE Connect app without leaving Dolphin. The Filter Bar (Ctrl + I) gains support for glob patterns and regular expressions — a power-user feature previously only available in the terminal. File and folder grouping is now independent from sorting, meaning you can sort alphabetically while grouping by file type simultaneously.
Okular consolidates its two separate settings dialogs into a single preferences panel — a small but overdue usability fix. Triple-clicking now selects an entire line. Konsole gains Alt+click drag-and-drop for file names, image paths, links, and email addresses.
The Bigger Picture
KDE Gear 26.08 ships 171 packages total. For users on KDE neon, the neon 20260820 build already integrates both Gear 26.08 and Plasma 6.7.4, so a simple system update pulls everything in at once. Other distributions — Arch, Fedora, openSUSE — will land the packages over the coming days via their normal update pipelines.
The release lands fifteen weeks before KDE's 30th birthday on October 14, and the project is clearly in a build-up phase: KDE Linux is progressing toward beta, Plasma 6.8 is targeting October 14 itself, and the apps collection is visibly growing with each cycle. KDE Gear 26.08 is a strong mid-year checkpoint for a project that has never looked healthier.