Plasma/Krunner

Krunner

Krunner is tool for searching and launching files and applications. It can also be used for more generic operations such as calculator or unit converter. On most systems krunner can be activated by pressing the Alt+F2 key combination.

Learn Krunner

The '?' icon to the right of the entry field explains the syntax of each of the active Runners. Scroll to see all the possible keywords and syntaxes that Runners recognise.

Krunner as a calculator

You can use Krunner as an efficient calculator. It's very easy to use too. Just press Alt+F2 and type the expression you want to evaluate such as 32*12= or =32*12 (You can put the = sign before or after the expression).

It is possible to evaluate more sophisticated expressions such as:

=sqrt(4) + 32 * sin(60)

Using it as an application launcher

This you probably already knew, Krunner can also launch applications. Start Krunner (Alt+F2) and type the name of the application you want to run.

Running BASH commands

The good thing about Krunner is that it doesn't only recognize applications, but it recognizes all binaries throughout your system. You can use this ability to run bash commands such as cp, mv, etc.

To do so, start Krunner (Alt+F2) and type the commands just as you would in Konsole:

cp ~/Documents/myFile ~/myFile  (not a useful example but you get the idea)

Running Internet commands

Enter a URL - http://www.somewhere.com - and the page will pop up in your browser.

Try web shortcuts, too - gg:some-term will bring up Google search results.

Navigating through options

Say you searched for an item in runner that brought you more than one result. And say you don't want to move your hand to reach the mouse to select the item. How would you go about it?

You can use the 'Tab' key on your keyboard to navigate through the results! Then just press Enter to select/run the item!

Controlling Power Management via PowerDevil addon

It is possible to control the various PowerDevil options via Krunner.

power profile - brings up available profiles
screen brightness - turns off or dims screen
screen brightness <percent> - sets the brightness percent of the screen
suspend - brings up suspend options
power governor - set the cpu governor
power scheme - set the power scheme

KRunner as a unit converter

KRunner can help you convert numbers from one unit to another for area, length, mass, speed and volume in KDE 4.2 and currency, energy, pressure and temperature in KDE 4.3. For each category, a default unit is set.

<number> <unit1> in <unit2>

converts <unit1> to <unit2>

example

6 feet in meters

will output 1.8288 m

<number> <unit1> as <unit2>

same as above with "as"

<number> <unit1>

converts <unit1> to default unit for its category

example

10 acres

will output 40469 m²