View View source History Page Discussion Plasma/Krunner KRunner (launched with Alt-F2 or Alt-SPACE) is the launcher built into the Plasma desktop. While its basic function is to launch programs from a sort of mini-command-line, its functionality can be extended by "runners" to assist the user to accomplish a lot of tasks. Note You may need to install additional KRunner addons package depending on your distribution to use some of the functionalities listed here. Note that a large number of active addons may slow down the start of KRunner, adjust this by clicking the wrench icon. Contents 1 Features 1.1 Start and stop applications 1.2 Direct installation 1.3 Issue (shell) commands 1.4 Browse websites 1.5 Open files, folders and devices 1.6 Multitask with sessions, windows, desktops and activities 1.7 Talk to people 1.8 Listen to some music 1.9 Be on time 1.10 Calculator 1.11 Go places 1.12 Spell checking and special characters 1.13 Manage your computer 2 Usage 2.1 Open KRunner 2.2 Use KRunner 2.3 Discover KRunner 3 Tips, Tricks and FAQs Features This woefully incomplete list attempts to present some basic examples of KRunner use. Discover more by clicking on the '?' icon in KRunner. Start and stop applications You can launch programs by simply typing the name of the application you want to launch - or even simpler: press the down-arrow key for list of most recently used programs you typed in beforehand. You may type a single character and KRunner will start finding matches. Matches will be found to applications from your easily customizable applications menu (for that, right-click in menu). Examples: Input Output gwe (starts Gwenview) You can use KRunner to kill applications, too. Type in the keyword kill followed by a process name and KRunner will provide options to close the application (SIGTERM) or forcibly quit it (SIGKILL). KRunner will match partial process names to running processes. Note that the keyword kill can be changed in the "Terminate Applications" runner to avoid confusion with the shell command kill which accepts process IDs. Direct installation In case that you look for an application that has not been installed yet, KRunner will suggest a set of applications that match your search. In specific, since KRunner has been integrated with Plasma Software Center, Discover, will present you a list of applications, enabling you to proceed to direct installation. Issue (shell) commands In addition to applications listed in the applications menu, KRunner can also be used to run shell commands, including launching binaries. Note that when entering shell commands, KRunner will not accept partial commands or offer command auto completion. Running a command like this brings up a wrench icon which offers additional options. You can choose to spawn a terminal and run the command there (this can be useful if your command produces text output that you want to read), or choose to run the program as a different user (by providing the username and password of that user). Examples: Input Output ls ~/Documents lists contents of ~/Documents (preferably in a terminal) cp ~/Documents/myFile ~/myFile copies myFile from ~/Documents to ~/ mplayer myMovie.mkv plays myMovie.mkv in mplayer Incidentally, if the command line is your thing, you may appreciate the built in integration to man pages. Simply type a command name preceded by a # or man:/ to open the man page formatted for easy readability in your browser. Examples: Input Output #ls opens the manual for ls in a browser man:/grep opens the manual for grep in a browser Browse websites You can simply start typing the URL of a website to open it in your default browser. You may even type in the name of a browser bookmark and KRunner will open it for you. If you have visited the website in the past, KRunner can fetch you results from your browser's history, too. Examples: Input Output myBookmark opens the bookmark in a browser kde.org opens the KDE homepage in a browser http://userbase.kde.org/ opens Userbase in a browser KRunner already knows your Web Shortcuts, found in Plasma System Settings, so you can directly start using them. Examples: Input Output gg:KDE searches Google for KDE wp:krunner searches Wikipedia for krunner KRunner also provides options to download files from the web using KGet by providing their URL. Additional runners exist for fast searching on Wikipedia, Wikitravel and KDE Techbase. Open files, folders and devices KRunner can also open files and directories on your local machine for you. If you want to browse remote machines, you can do that, too. Notice how KRunner uses kioslaves for ssh (fish:) and samba (smb:). Examples: Input Output file:/home/ opens file:///home/ (the Home directory) in Dolphin file:myMovie.mkv opens /home/myMovie.mkv fish:[email protected] opens fish:/[email protected]/ via fish (file over ssh) protocol smb:myWindowsBox opens smb:/myWindowsBox via Samba If you don't know the path to a file, simply type the name of the file. If the file is a recently opened document, KRunner will list it for you. If you have enabled "File Search" provided by Baloo daemon, you can also search your computer for the file by its indexed contents. KRunner will also open folders you've bookmarked in Dolphin (in your Places sidebar) if you type their name in. What's more, if you want to access devices on your system (both mounted and unmounted), you can do that, too. KRunner will even provide device-specific options. Examples: Input Output Home opens the Home directory in Dolphin myFlashDrive shows options to mount or open the contents of myFlashDrive Multitask with sessions, windows, desktops and activities Several KDE applications allow you to save and load sessions. KRunner allows you to launch these sessions. You can either type in the name of the application or directly type in the name of the session. Runners exist for opening sessions saved in Kate, Konqueror, Konsole, etc. KRunner is a multitasker's dream. If you have too many windows open, just type in the title of the window and switch directly to it. You can similarly type in the name of a virtual desktop and switch directly to it. If you roll with activities, switch activities by typing their name in. KRunner will find a match as soon as you type three characters in. KRunner will even switch desktop sessions for you. Type in the keyword switch or new session to start a separate X session. You can switch back and forth between sessions by using the switch keyword. Examples: Input Output Desktop 1 switches the virtual desktop to Desktop 1 myWorkActivity switches the activity to myWorkActivity switch shows options to switch to an existing session or start a new one new session starts a new session Several plasma widgets can be launched as windowed applications. You can simply type the name of a widget and KRunner will launch a window for you. Talk to people Type in the name of a contact in your KAddressBook to get a list of options to contact them. Typing in an email address into KRunner will open a KMail composer window. You can also search through contacts in your Kopete contact list. The addressbook and kopete runners don't seem to be working in SC 4.8. Examples: Input Output [email protected] compose a mail to the KDE mailing list myContact show options to contact myContact Listen to some music You can control any modern audio player such as Amarok using KRunner. You can use several keywords (all configurable) to play, pause or skip songs. Typing in the name of an artist, album or song that is in Amarok's library will let you either play immediately, play next (queue) or play at the end (append) of the current playlist. You can use keywords to increase or decrease the volume of the player, or even to mute or quit it. Examples: Input Output play song search plays a song immediately pause pauses Amarok or your designated music player next plays next song in playlist Be on time You can get the current date or time by typing in the keywords date or time. Selecting the result will copy it to your clipboard so you can paste it elsewhere. The format of the date and time respects your system settings. Examples: Input Output date Today's date is ... time The current time is ... You can even get the date and time at another location by specifying the time zone or the city listed in the TZ database. Examples: Input Output time UTC The current time in UTC is ... time oslo The current time in Europe/Oslo is ... time kolkata The current time in Asia/Kolkata is ... There is a runner for interfacing with Korganizer and fetching events, but it doesn't seem to be working in SC 4.8. Calculator KRunner features a very versatile calculator that can be called by starting or ending a calculation with an = sign. In addition to basic arithmetic, you can call scientific functions like sqrt(), sin(), log(), etc. A list of the supported functions is here. Note that trigonometric functions like sin(), cos(), etc expect the angle in radians. KRunner understands pi in expressions. Examples: Input Output 32*12 = 384 = sqrt(4) + 32*sin(30*pi/180) 18 KRunner also supports combinatorics functions, like perm() or comb(). Examples: Input Output = perm(10,5) 30240 = comb(10,5) 252 KRunner can also handle symbolic mathematics and perform integration and differentiation on expressions Examples: Input Output = integrate( -x/y^2, y ) -x/y diff( log(x) ) = 1/x You can also use KRunner to solve polynomial functions to find its roots.