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It would be lovely to have the "Application Menu, a launcher based on cascading popup menus" as an icon in my i3bar to have a general overview of the packages I have installed in my system, within each categories (Internet, Games etc.) I could not figure out how to start the applet in the i3 environment. Is there a command that could call the applet itself (may also start some KDE process that runs ONLY in the background)? Obviously, I do not want to start the whole KDE5.

I found that running plasmashell -ws or plasmashell --windowed --shut-up starts the whole KDE desktop as a window which can also manage windows started from within i3wm. However, that is such an overkill to just start one component/plasmoid. I found that kcmshell{4,5} can be used to call a collection of modules that are available via kcmshell{4,5} --list, but they are seemingly not plasmoids.

hyiltiz
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1 Answers1

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After a thorough study on KDE5 API, I found the answer to my own question. To start kicker (Application Menu) form within a command line WITHOUT starting the whole KDE desktop, simply run:

plasmawindowed org.kde.plasma.kicker

We can also run a lot of other plasmoids. To see a list of all plasmoids installed, run both of the following:

kpackagetool5 --list --type Plasma/Applet -g  # system wide
kpackagetool5 --list --type Plasma/Applet     # current user

Here is the API page: https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Plasma5/QML2/GettingStarted

Here is a more complete API page: https://techbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration/PlasmaDesktopScripting

flying sheep
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hyiltiz
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    Now I am trying to find out a way to put this windowed applet/plasmoid into my i3bar as a icon. – hyiltiz Dec 16 '15 at 04:53
  • Any newer developments in this front? – Nikos Alexandris Sep 01 '16 at 06:19
  • I am content with the solution above (you can use `i3` to move and rescale the widget as you like), so no more news on my side. KDE or i3 might have something interesting though. – hyiltiz Sep 27 '16 at 23:29
  • Do you use [Klipper](https://userbase.kde.org/Klipper) under i3? – Nikos Alexandris Sep 28 '16 at 14:22
  • Nope, I haven't tried using it. If it is an plasma app, you can list it using one of the above commands, and once you find its command line name (org.kde.plasma.*), then you should be able to also only activate it within i3. As I am a heavy vim user, I mainly rely on my editor to do the pastebin job. – hyiltiz Sep 28 '16 at 16:40
  • Off-topic, maybe: I nearly write every text with vim. How do you replicate a list of "copy-paste" entries though within it? – Nikos Alexandris Oct 01 '16 at 06:45
  • @NikosAlexandris It is indeed offtopic. Go https://superuser.com/questions/300362/vim-how-to-paste-a-block-of-text-at-the-end-of-multiple-lines – hyiltiz Jun 05 '20 at 17:57