SUMMARY KRunner is a really good feature, but it's impossible to find it when using Plasma normally because it's almost hidden. There are no visual cues on the interface that KRunner even exists. EXPECTED RESULT I propose a magnifying glass 🔍 icon should be somewhere on the bottom panel to make KRunner a more discoverable feature. When clicking on it KRunner would show up just like when you use the keyboard shortcut. Both Mac OS and Windows have a similar icon. Mac Os has a Spotlight search icon on the top right corner and Windows have a search field next to the start menu icon. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION "Discoverability, in the context of product and interface design, is the degree of ease with which the user can find all the elements and features of a new system when they first encounter it."
Created attachment 118900 [details] Default search icon for KRunner It could look like this (look on the bottom left corner)
Ooops, I also forgot to mention Krunner should be closed when pressing the button after it's already been opened.
I agree that KRunner's functionality should be more discoverable. Your proposal is basically to add the KRunner widget to the panel by default. This would be quite like Windows 10, or macOS. Not bad, but I think we can do even better! My preference is to improve the mini-KRunner in the Application Launcher's search field so that it exposes the full featureset, rather than just a fraction of it. That's tracked with Bug 382760. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 382760 ***