Controlling Music Players

When a music player designed for KDE is open, like Amarok or Clementine, you can use KRunner to control it. Entering the name of an artist, album, or song will add the result to the end of the current search, while play SONG search will play the result immediately. When a song is selected, you can also use the commands play, pause, skip, or next.

Computer Management

From KRunner, you can go directly to a section of System Settings. As well, KRunner can be used to enter the usual shutdown controls: sleep, lock, restart, and shutdown. In addition, screen brightness PERCENTAGE will adjust the monitor screen.

Limitations

KRunner is not a complete replacement for all aspects of Plasma. It is meant to perform a single operation and then close. It is not suitable, for instance, for compiling binary code, because you would want to see all the messages while building. The only solution I have found is to create a new Activity and leave it unpopulated so that typing with the Activity open automatically opens KRunner. Just as annoying, the documentation appears incomplete and is occasionally outdated, perhaps because of a lack of communication between the KRunner maintainers and other applications. Still another weakness is that KRunner is designed to work with standard Plasma applications and will not work as intended if you prefer other applications.

Yet despite these limitations, if you take the time to learn the parts of KRunner that fit with your workflow and work with your preferred apps, KRunner is often faster than the desktop. It is also more ergonomic and can save you hundreds of mouse clicks per day – proof once again that the command line can sometimes be mightier than a graphical interface.