# KRunner

8 Hacker News commenters recommended KRunner and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Fast KDE Plasma launcher with plugins and search extensions, often rated above Spotlight. Caveats: currency conversion often fails to trigger, and it is mainly useful to KDE users.

## Why people recommend it

- Plugins and KDE search extensions (2 comments): "KRunner also has plugins, Gnome Also has search extensions, without depending on a 3rd party app that might pull the rug anytime." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49827301)) "it supports all the enabled KDE Search plugins" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46570029))

## What people warn about

- Currency conversion often doesn't trigger (1 comments): "it often doesn't trigger when you want to convert e.g. currency" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50231078))
- Only useful to KDE users (1 comments): "krunner is only going to attract KDE users" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49826967))
- Cannot index Google Drive files (1 comments): "I can't seem to get KRunner to index my Drive files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989346))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Raycast](https://hackerapproved.com/p/raycast.md): 95 recommend
- [Alfred for macOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/alfred.md): 55 recommend
- [Spotlight](https://hackerapproved.com/p/spotlight.md): 43 recommend
- [Tuna launcher for macOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tuna.md): 10 recommend
- [Vicinae](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vicinae.md): 9 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "KRunner", https://hackerapproved.com/p/krunner/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).