KDE developers have landed long-sought Wayland session management in Plasma 6.7. KWin now backs the protocol. Applications on Wayland can finally recall their sizes and positions post-reboot. This marks a milestone. For years, users endured makeshift workarounds or stuck with X11. No more.
The feature stems from KDE Bugzilla #436318, opened in 2021. It tracked real session save and restore for Wayland windows—positions, states, even content. Early Plasma 6 offered ‘fake’ restore: just relaunch apps, hope they remember internals. Plasma 6.1 shipped that fallback. But true restoration demanded a protocol. The xx-session-management-v1 draft lingered for six years. Qt 6.10 added support in mid-2025. KWin’s turn came via merge request !8985, resolved April 2026. Vlad Zahorodnii, KWin developer, announced it in the KDE blog: “KWin now supports the Wayland session management protocol! This is an important step for apps to be able to remember their sizes and positions after restarting the system. The next step is for toolkits, libraries, and apps to implement support. We’re getting there!”
Plasma 6.7 isn’t fully there yet. Compositor-side foundation exists. Apps must opt in. KDE software built on recent Qt will likely lead. Third-party apps? Slower. GNOME beat KDE here—Mutter and GTK implemented drafts earlier. KDE users, though, gain per-screen virtual desktops too. After 21 years of requests, each monitor switches desktops independently. Hynek Schlindenbuch drove that via Bugzilla #107302. Multi-monitor power users rejoice. Keep email on screen two, code on one. Switch freely.
A developer sprint in Graz, Austria, accelerated Plasma 6.7. Phoronix notes the burst: easier microphone testing after five years, System Monitor labeling multi-GPU setups properly, L2TP VPN in network settings, and the Air theme’s return from KDE 4 days. Plasma panels, widgets, activities? They restore as before on Wayland, thanks to prior work. Full app state—like Konsole tabs or Dolphin directories—hinges on app cooperation. David Edmundson pushed ‘real-fake’ restore in Plasma 6.1, bridging gaps securely via portals for Flatpaks.
But. X11 lingers. Plasma 6.8 drops its session in 2027, per earlier Phoronix reporting. Plasma 6.7 gets extra X11 patches for holdouts. Wayland adoption surges—90% in some distros. Session restore cements it. Linuxiac highlights the workflow boost: “This will allow reliable restoration of application states after a restart, enabling applications to remember their size and screen position between sessions.” Expect mid-June release. Neon users snag it first.
Industry watchers see parity with macOS or Windows. Linux desktops close the gap. No benchmarks yet on restore speed—KWin’s efficient, though. Multi-monitor setups benefit most. Developers test via System Settings > Startup > Session Management. Set to ‘Restore previous session.’ Log out. Reboot. Check positions.
Challenges remain. Chromium lags protocol support. Some apps ignore opt-ins. But momentum builds. Plasma 6.7 arrives amid Wayland’s dominance. X11 fades. Users switch desktops per screen. Apps snap back. Workflows endure reboots. KDE delivers.
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