How do I open the Application Launcher on KDE with just the meta ("Windows") key?

Question

How do I open the application launcher ("start menu") of Kubuntu with my Windows key? Similar to how the Start menu in Windows is opened. I don't want to use Alt+F1.

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Despite overwhelming popular support since 2009, opening the launcher with Super/Win still not implemented in KDE! — Dan Dascalescu, Aug 18 '16 at 01:49

score 160 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 14 '22 at 01:15

160

If you assign the launcher shortcut key to Meta+F1 or Alt+F1, KDE will instead interpret this as assigning it to solely the Meta key.

To open the settings window, right-click on the launcher icon and choose Configure Application Launcher. Then click on Keyboard shortcuts (as shown below).

After clicking Apply, the launcher should open when just pressing Meta. This currently works on Plasma 5.24 and 5.25.

edited Sep 14 '22 at 01:15

jaxrtech

103

answered Oct 02 '17 at 18:06

Murupoicy

1,609

1

KDE Plasma 5.8.7, somehow crashed kde and the windows key didn't work anymore, but this fixed it. – Karl Oct 14 '17 at 02:16
5

On plasma 5.13.5 works as expected, should be selected answer. – Mark Carpenter Jr Apr 04 '19 at 12:55
Worked! for me worked after logout and login (ubuntu 18.04). – Hadi Rasouli Jan 23 '20 at 17:00
worked for me. it just now open with meta key – Pouya Samie Feb 05 '20 at 17:33
4

Does not work on Plasma 5.16.5. – andrybak May 02 '20 at 14:21
works on plazma 5.18.5 – Harshiv Sep 07 '20 at 04:28
This does not work for me and I'm on Plasma 5.18.5, too. Meta-F1 will open the menu, but not just Meta. There must be more to it. – Vince Sep 14 '20 at 07:54
Works for me in 5.18.5 (just adding Meta-F1, not editing ~/.config/kwinrc) – kay_D Oct 17 '20 at 16:42
Works on Plasma 5.20.4 – Paul Rey Dec 07 '20 at 10:01
1

Works on Plasma 5.21.2. – Archisman Panigrahi Mar 28 '21 at 11:57
3

works, but you can assign ALT+F1 to Application Launcher then Meta will work too. https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma_application_launchers/en – christianbueno.1 Aug 10 '21 at 03:15
20

Works, but WHY??? This is such a stupid solution lmao – cyqsimon Aug 12 '21 at 02:23
3

5.23.4 and it's gone again – HilarieAK Dec 10 '21 at 16:06
1

Works on Plasma 5.25.5... weird. – Grrruk Jan 27 '23 at 21:35
Was working on 5.27 but I "lost it" somehow. This hack worked. It does seem to be a hack though. – will Jun 26 '23 at 02:37

score 45 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

45

About modifier keys

Modifier keys like Ctrl, Alt and also the Meta (also called "Super" or "Windows" key, are meant to operate only as modifier keys. This design works its way down to the roots of all the libraries under the GUI you see using KDE: Qt, Xorg, etc.

Your exact question is here on the KDE Forums by the way: Super key to load Application Menu.

ksuperkey

It seems however, that there's a large audience for this feature. So, in case you really want this to work, you could try the ksuperkey package, which contains all you need:

ksuperkey allows you to open the application launcher in KDE Plasma < 5.8 using the Super key (also known as the "Windows key"). If you hold down the Super key it will still act as a modifier key, allowing you to use it for other keyboard shortcuts.

ksuperkey is a small application that runs in the background as a daemon. It was forked from xcape by Albin Olsson: https://github.com/alols/xcape

ksuperkey can be installed from this PPA.

Note that KDE Plasma 5.8 and above will support this feature by default.

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Jan 24 '13 at 08:55

gertvdijk

69,607

1

Thank you very much! Wow it was soo easy with Ubuntu. I appreciate it! – sushi2141 Jan 25 '13 at 00:47
Is there a way to assign this to a hot corner, like in gnome-shell? – Apr 11 '14 at 11:56
@Karsta Make that a new question! :) – gertvdijk Apr 11 '14 at 12:34
1

@dan, you've edited my answer with the statement that it is now built-in in 5.8+, but how do we use it? – gertvdijk Mar 20 '17 at 10:43
@gertvdijk: no idea... I haven't tried KDE after the silly amount of bugs I found in it within the first few hours. This blog claims that modifier-only shortcuts are working in Plasma 5.8. – Dan Dascalescu Mar 20 '17 at 10:47
Update for 2017 - the solution provided below by Murupoicy (Mapping to META - F1) works fine here out of the box. – Arend Nov 01 '17 at 05:25
1

Nothing works on KDE Neon. By nothing, i mean that assigning your own shortcut never ever does anything. It's plain broken. Note that there's no shortcut by default because you will certainly have replaced the default weird menu with the alternate sane one. – Johan Boulé Feb 11 '18 at 01:06
4

this is outdated. later plasma versions come with Meta key as default and let you restore it if lost by selecting Meta-F1 as indicated in the other answer – Jan 16 '19 at 09:24

score 27 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 08 '15 at 18:52

27

It doesn't do exactly what you are asking for, but ALT-Space opens a search box with which you can launch basically the stuff you could select from the Application Launcher.

answered Sep 08 '15 at 18:52

js.

371
3
3

2

Was exactly what I was looking for and I didnt even know. – Vasspilka Oct 23 '15 at 13:18
Such an underutilized feature IMO, from someone who's default action, is to strike the meta whenever launching an application. – Mark Carpenter Jr Apr 04 '19 at 13:01
that's still 2 keys, for a super-common feature. – Berry Tsakala Sep 27 '20 at 09:43
Agreed, this answer does not perfectly answer the question, but ALT + SPACE works perfectly for my needs. – Trevor Sullivan Oct 12 '22 at 17:06

John · Answer 4 · 2021-03-15T12:24:09.247

14

Feature has been added by default since Plasma 5.8. If it's not working, make sure your "Start Menu" widget has a global shortcut like Alt+F1 set. You can't assign it directly to Meta, but it will open with Meta if another shortcut is assigned).

Right Click the KDE Icon → Application Menu Settings
Keyboard Shortcuts Tab → Shortcut: Alt+F1

Latte Dock:

If you're using Latte Dock, you will need to run the following commands mentioned in it's Wiki.

kwriteconfig5 --file ~/.config/kwinrc --group ModifierOnlyShortcuts --key Meta  "org.kde.lattedock,/Latte,org.kde.LatteDock,activateLauncherMenu"
qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin reconfigure

https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/Tips#open-start-menu-with-windows-meta-key

edited Mar 15 '21 at 12:24

answered Dec 15 '20 at 10:36

John

723

2

Very nice. This is my experience. After upgrade things sstopped working. I had two places to set shortcut for launcher widget. Had to move from one to the other so that win key started to work again. My credit to https://superuser.com/q/1588474/111432 – akostadinov May 20 '21 at 17:40
Thanks, I'm using Latte panel and this works well – a3k Jun 15 '22 at 03:00

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 22 '15 at 10:32

5

simple workaround without loosing meta: meta + z (u.s. layout)

can be hit with just one finger at one

answered Aug 22 '15 at 10:32

CoolShoe

59

Simple and effective!!! – Diosney Nov 05 '15 at 22:12
I like this workaround since with ksuperkey there is a lag when closing the menu by tapping Super twice. – Diosney Nov 05 '15 at 22:12
1

As of KDE Plasma 5.5.5, this doesn't work. Worse, if you press Meta+z in the terminal, you'll get some odd string. – Dan Dascalescu Aug 17 '16 at 23:30

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 09 '17 at 13:44

5

I'm on Plasma 5.8.5 and I can enable this feature by going to System Settings -> Input Devices -> Keyboard -> Advanced -> The third checkbox should be "Alt/Win key behavior" -> Choose "Meta is mapped to Win keys" -> Apply

You are all set :)

answered Feb 09 '17 at 13:44

Georgi

67

12

On my system (Kubuntu 18.04 LTS) there're two alternatives: Meta is mapped to Left Win and Meta is mapped to Win. I tried both, but neither of them worked. – code_dredd Sep 18 '18 at 16:56
1

No effect for me... same result as code_dredd – Vince Sep 14 '20 at 07:59
it worked for me – Jone Polvora Nov 03 '22 at 21:10

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 15 '20 at 23:53

3

kwriteconfig5 --file ~/.config/kwinrc --group ModifierOnlyShortcuts --key Meta "org.kde.plasmashell,/PlasmaShell,org.kde.PlasmaShell,activateLauncherMenu"

works most of the time for me. It adds the setting to the kwin config file. This means it defines a new so called "ModifierOnlyShortcurt", which is just the Meta key to activate the launcher menu.

answered Jan 15 '20 at 23:53

nee6AGag

131

1

This is the correct answer. – OneOfOne Jun 20 '22 at 21:03

score 3 · Answer 8 · edited Apr 01 '22 at 14:49

While the accepted answer may have worked a few years ago, ksuperkey does not seem to work on Kubuntu 15.10, when installed from PPA. I have no doubt ksuperkey is a better solution, but I ended up following the link in gertvdjik's answer and using this solution, which works absolutely fine. Posting here for future googlers who had the same trouble as I did.

For brevity;

NOTICE: YOU WILL LOSE THE META KEY - so you might want to map it somewhere else.

Run xev | grep keycode press the meta key and watch the output (the code is likely 115)

then add an entry to your Xmodmap configuration:
echo 'keycode 115 = F13' > ~/.Xmodmap
"xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap" will change the keysym to F13 (not present on most keyboards ;-) and you can use it like any regular key.

If your distro does (probably) not invoke ~/.Xmodmap by default, add a short script to ~/.kde/share/autostart/xmodmap.sh
xmodmap.sh:
#!/bin/sh xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap
and make it executable chmod +x ~/.kde/share/autostart/xmodmap.sh

I receive this error : cat: keycode 115 = F13: No such file or directory — Sadegh, Feb 04 '16 at 12:25
@Woeistg You might try replacing that line with echo "keycode 115 = F13" >> ~/.Xmodmap, the important thing is that the ~/.Xmodmap file contain that line. If that works for you i can edit the post. — Knetic, Feb 04 '16 at 19:09
Note: ksuperkey works on Plasma 5.7, built from source (KDE Neon with Ubuntu 16.04 base) — sola, Jul 17 '16 at 09:31

score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 13 '22 at 15:09

For me, the keyboard shortcut Windows + Enter worked (Kubuntu: 22.04/KDE Plasma: 5.24.6).

Steps:

Right click on Application Launcher icon, select Configure Application Launcher.

Go to Keyboard Shortcuts tab and click on Input ... button.

Hit Windows + Enter keys on the keyboard.

(Windows = Meta = Super = same key.

Enter = Return = same key)

It should look like this

Finally, click on Ok to save the configuration and test.

Finally a solution that works. Thank you! – Jeff Lamb Apr 25 '23 at 18:20 — Jeff Lamb, Apr 25 '23 at 18:20

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Dec 03 '20 at 18:26

1

Running the "If you wish to revert..." commands from here fixed it for me in the latest Kubuntu after I 'broke' it switching to a custom doc.

answered Dec 03 '20 at 18:26

Nieminen

121

it didn't work for me. – SalahAdDin Apr 07 '22 at 15:55

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Jun 22 '24 at 07:26

Things have changed in Plasma 6.1 concerning "modifier-only" shortcuts: they can be configured visually with the Shortcut system settings and are now stored together with other shortcuts in “~/.config/kglobalshortcutsrc”.

https://www.lorenzobettini.it/2024/06/modifier-only-shortcuts-in-kde-plasma-6-1/

Sadegh · Answer 12 · 2016-02-08T09:05:22.900

1

This soultion worked for me

sudo apt-get install git gcc make libx11-dev libxtst-dev pkg-config
git clone https://github.com/hanschen/ksuperkey.git
cd ksuperkey
make
./ksuperkey

then make it to start every-time your computer boots up.

source

edited Feb 08 '16 at 09:05

answered Feb 07 '16 at 22:29

Sadegh

1,145

Doesn't work on Kubuntu 19.04 anymore – Dakkaron Mar 31 '22 at 11:54

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Mar 12 '20 at 10:03

I have also be confused about this question weeks ago.
Today I added a panel and a Tiled Menu on it. Then I use alt+F5 to activate it.
Beacuse alt+F1 F2 F3 F4 are alreadly occupied. Really, not alt+F1.
It happened just after reboot that the Super was back to life!
So I think that:

The one on Latte Dock won't work.
The one on a default panel will do.

It's interesting.
KDE Plasma Version:5.14.5
KDE Frameworks Version:5.54.0
Debian 10.3

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Apr 08 '22 at 20:59

It just randomly stopped working today for me. Had to right click the Application Launcher (start menu) > Configure > Assign a new keyboard shortcut 'Meta + Z' because some ditzy person decided to disable the option to just use Meta (That I can assure you was deliberate) Then. Boom! It started working with just Meta and also Meta + Z.

What a silly solution all because KDE has dementia and can't remember what happened 5 minutes ago. History in Konsole, Screen layouts, etc etc. There are many such examples.

score 0 · Answer 15 · edited Oct 30 '17 at 15:48

0

This simple solution don't use the Meta key but you can use only the Menu key for the shortcut.

edited Oct 30 '17 at 15:48

pomsky

70,797

answered Oct 30 '17 at 15:08

Khin

39

doesn't work on my laptop – Jan 16 '19 at 09:08
We have 2020 now, it should be possible to use the meta key. – shuhalo Sep 02 '20 at 07:28

How do I open the Application Launcher on KDE with just the meta ("Windows") key?

15 Answers15

About modifier keys

ksuperkey

Steps:

Linked