Lancelot/Discover Lancelot

Discover Lancelot

The first section takes you on a guided tour of Lancelot. The second section is dedicated to more advanced options and concepts.

General information

Introduction

Lancelot is an application launching menu for KDE Software Compilation.

Lancelot or Kickoff?

Lancelot provides many features and configuration options that Kickoff doesn't. For a more detailed comparison, see comparison to other launchers.

Kickoff is the default application launching menu for KDE SC. To replace Kickoff with Lancelot, you need to add it via the 'add widgets' panel. For more info on how to add and remove widgets to the panel, see Plasma/HowTo.

Lancelot or KRunner?

Lancelot can be used as a KRunner replacement. See comparison to other launchers for list of benefits.

By default, Lancelot can be accessed via Alt+F5 shortcut (can be changed).

Basic usage

Lancelot, with default settings

When you click the launcher icon you added to the panel, Lancelot menu will open.

It shows four sections - Applications, Computer, Contacts and Documents.

Applications

The Applications section contains a list of your favourite applications in the left column, and application categories in the right one. If the application that you are looking for is not among the Favourites, you can browse the categories on the right just by selecting one of them.

When you dive into the categories, the Favourites section will disappear to provide more space for the browsing. You can always return to it by using the breadcrumb bar on the top.

Computer

Computer section of Lancelot

The Computer section contains list of defined places (as seen in Dolphin), some useful system applications and a list of storage devices.

You can eject/mount/unmount removable devices directly from the menu just by right-clicking the desired one and choosing the appropriate option from the context menu.

Contacts

The Contacts section shows the list of unread mails from Akonadi (KMail) and online contacts from Kopete.

Documents

The Documents section shows a list of office applications on the left, and a list of currently and recently opened documents on the right.

Searching capabilities

Lancelot provides all searching features KRunner has. You can use it to find applications, to do calculations, execute BASH commands, as a unit converter etc. For more details, see KRunner Usage.

Keyboard navigation

If you don't like to use the mouse, every part of Lancelot can be accessed via keyboard.

Action	Key	Description
Switch sections one by one	Page Up and Page Down	Shows previous and next section respectively
Switch to the specific section	Alt + number	Alt + 1 for Applications, Alt + 2 for Computer...
Activating items	Alt + letter	If an item has a letter underlined in its title, it can be activated by pressing together Alt and that letter
Moving through list items	Up and down keys
Moving between columns	Left and right keys
Activating the selected item	Enter	If no item is selected, the first search result is executed
Opening context menu for the selected item	Alt + Enter
Search box completion	Tab and End; Left and Right keys	Tab and End keys use the whole suggestion while Left and Right move through the suggestion.