In this release, many aspects of Plasma have been polished and rewritten to provide high consistency and bring new features. There is a completely rewritten notification system supporting Do Not Disturb mode, more intelligent history with grouping, critical notifications in fullscreen apps, improved notifications for file transfer jobs, a much more usable System Settings page to configure everything, and many other things. The System and Widget Settings have been refined and worked on by porting code to newer Kirigami and Qt technologies and polishing the user interface. And of course the VDG and Plasma team effort towards Usability & Productivity goal continues, getting feedback on all the papercuts in our software that make your life less smooth and fixing them to ensure an intuitive and consistent workflow for your daily use.

For the first time, the default wallpaper of Plasma 5.16 will be decided by a contest where everyone can participate and submit art. The winner will receive a Slimbook One v2 computer, an eco-friendly, compact machine, measuring only 12.4 x 12.8 x 3.7 cm. It comes with an i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and is capable of outputting video in glorious 4K. Naturally, your One will come decked out with the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop, your spectacular wallpaper, and a bunch of other great software made by KDE. You can find more information and submitted work on the competition wiki page, and you can submit your own wallpaper in the subforum.