Bug 474207

Summary:	Provide a scripting API to run arbitrary commands
Product:	[Plasma] kwin	Reporter:	coherence <niuchangcun>
Component:	scripting	Assignee:	KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	AndyKluger, arusahni, ashark, edoubrayrie, havard.stien, kde, natalie_clarius, nate, niuchangcun, ThomasvonderElbe
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	5.27.7
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Arch Linux
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description coherence 2023-09-06 05:33:01 UTC

SUMMARY
KWin Scripts lack an API to run arbitrary commands/applications. 

I did a simple search and found at least 4 people in reddit had asked the same question and did not find out a way to do so. I see there was a way to call dbus service `org.kde.klauncher5` to execute commands. But this service is unavailable in my system. And as this post https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455515 says, it was deprecated and removed.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: 
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.7
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.109.0
Qt Version: 5.15.0

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Comment 1 Daniël 2024-04-06 17:33:23 UTC

FWIW, I recently also ran into this and as a workaround wrote my own small helper program to run arbitrary commands via DBus.

https://github.com/DvdGiessen/dbus-app-launcher

Another (hacky) workaround to do this (without an additional dependency) is adding an DBus autostart file for the command you want to run, which will let the DBus deamon start your app for you.

But I agree having this functionality be available directly in the scripting API would be much better.

Comment 2 Thomas Vde 2025-11-03 16:42:41 UTC

I can confirm, that Daniël's solution works beautifully!

But a native option would of course be desirable.

Strange, that this is not possible already. Seems like a very basic necessity to me. 

I hope, this gets addressed soon.