No search results in application launcher

I installed Manjaro about a month ago and it worked fine, until a few days ago I did an update with pacman -Syu. Since then, whenever I type anything into the Application Launcher’s search bar, no results are shown. I’ve tried rebooting, but that has not had any effect. I would appreciate any help with this issue. Thank you.

use krunner config :wink: so load/read krunner configuration

I’ve checked KRunner settings, and all the available plugins are already enabled.

The same happened to me. It was working a few days ago (I installed this Manjaro a few days ago). But today (an hour ago) I booted into Manjaro, and updated something (everything that can be updated; stable branch), then the “Application Launcher Search” stopped working. I then updated to kernel 5.15.2-2 (from 5.14.18-1), still not working (probably irrelevant).

The KRunner (e.g. typing on the desktop) still works, it’s only the “Application Launcher Search” stopped working:

  • No longer able to just “Meta” key then directly type and search (now has to move the focus to the search bar manually), and
  • Search result is blank (cannot remember whether there would be “Nothing found” or just blank before if nothing found)

*Now fixed with OP’s “removing the 2nd (and 3rd) application launcher(s) from panels on other monitor”.

1 Like

Glad to see I’m not the only one. I’m also experiencing the issue where the search bar isn’t focused by default.

Edit: Bug is now fixed Upstream. It will be in the next Plasma 5.23.5 Release, which is scheduled at Tue 2022-01-04.


Upstream Bug in KDE: 443131 – When there's more than one Kickoff, clicking on the old one causes search to be broken until you search with the new one


The reason underlying bug can result in different observed behavior.

As this bug was already reported ~2 months ago, I would say that it won’t be fixed within the next weeks.

The only viable workaround I see is, is to replace the Kickoff menu with an older one, until the issue is fixed upstream.


If you trust me, you can follow this guide / download:

  1. Download the old Application Launcher: GDrive Download
    Note: This Applet is the previous one, which shipped with Manjaro before the update which broke it. No Modifications made.
    MD5: 95aab48ec1fa9154739d1f73a0faf8f8
  2. Extract the ZIP file
  3. Copy the folder org.kde.plasma.kickoff to: ~/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids/
  4. Add the Launcher, by right-clicking on the taskbar → Add Miniprograms

If the new launcher works, then you can safely remove the old one.

It works, as the ~/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids/ folder under is being prioritized.

When the Upstream KDE Bug is fixed and the fix has been shipped to the Stable Branch, you can safely revert the change by removing the folder we created.

The folder should look like this:

Hope it works for you!

1 Like

Thanks! After reading the upstream bug, I actually managed to work around this by removing the application launcher from my second monitor’s taskbar. Not ideal, but I wasn’t really using the second application launcher anyway. After a reboot, the main application launcher is now working fine. Thanks again.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.