SUMMARY GNOME has a rather nice workflow where you can press Meta to get an overview of your windows, and then start typing to search apps/etc. KWin's "Present Windows" feature does a great job of the first part and KRunner does a great job of the second, but I would like to combine these with one keyboard shortcut. But as it stands, KRunner won't show up while Present Windows is active. Currently, typing in the Present Windows interface searches your windows. KRunner will do the same thing and more, so I think this is a good improvement upon the existing behaviour. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. `qdbus org.kde.kglobalaccel /component/kwin invokeShortcut ExposeAll; qdbus org.kde.krunner /App display` OBSERVED RESULT Present Windows work as usual, but no sign of KRunner until Present Windows is closed. EXPECTED RESULT 1. Present Windows should appear, and KRunner should appear on top of it. 2. KRunner should get keyboard focus while the user can still click on windows. 3. KRunner's "Windows" plugin should get priority (always be the first search result if there's any match) while Present Windows is active. 4. Typing in KRunner should hide non-matching windows in Present Windows (this is the current behaviour in Present Windows which would be nice to preserve). 5. Closing either KRunner or Present Windows should automatically close the other as well. This would be optimal, but a minimally viable implementation would just allow KRunner to open on top of Present Windows. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Linux: Archlinux 5.14.16-zen1-1-zen amd64 KDE Plasma Version: 5.23.2 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.87.0 Qt Version: 5.15.2
Present Windows is deprecated; this would be done in the new Overview effect which is slated to replace it. Moving there. I agree, it would be nice. It would turn the effect into a sort of "one stop shop" for accessing windows and launching apps.
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/1642
Git commit 195de46c9156584afee3283c7efe97dd400244bc by Vlad Zahorodnii. Committed on 18/11/2021 at 07:26. Pushed by vladz into branch 'master'. effects/overview: Use Milou for search results Based on user feedback, it will be great to have krunner functionality integrated in the overview/present windows effect. This change ports the overview effect to Milou for search results. With it, one can search for existing windows or launch new applications. M +56 -15 src/effects/overview/qml/ScreenView.qml M +3 -43 src/effects/overview/qml/WindowHeap.qml https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/commit/195de46c9156584afee3283c7efe97dd400244bc