KDE Plasma 6.7 Beta Introduces Plasma Bigscreen Mode for HTPCs

The KDE Plasma Linux desktop environment is already a feature-rich desktop for both productivity and gaming, but the KDE development team has been hard at work adding ever more features to the DE and polishing the experience. One of the newest additions to KDE, apparently coming in Plasma 6.7 and now available for testing in the Plasma 6.7 Beta, is the introduction of Plasma Bigscreen, which is a new desktop UI built specifically for home theater PC setups, and it looks to be a more open alternative to Steam’s Big Picture mode or the SteamOS desktop. Those looking to test out KDE Plasma 6.7 ahead of release can download the beta from KDE.org.

KDE Plasma Bigscreen is fully open source and is designed around a controller friendly desktop interface that uses a similar row-based layout and quick access to settings as SteamOS, but, unlike Valve’s SteamOS, you don’t need to rely on adding apps to Steam to launch them from the Bigscreen UI. It uses the same Kwin, Qt, KDE Frameworks, and Kirigami underpinnings as desktop Plasma, meaning Plasma Bigscreen users can install just about any apps that are offered by their distribution’s package manager or via Flathub. It also works with KDE’s customization and theming from within the settings app, which will make Bigscreen highly customizable where SteamOS’s fullscreen UI more or less makes you use a plugin to make any significant aesthetic changes. KDE Plasma 6.7 is slated for a full-scale launch in June 2026, and Plasma Bigscreen is expected to be included with Plasma 6.7 as long as nothing goes catastrophically wrong during the beta.