Hello,

I've been a long time Linux user and I have just switched to using KDE via Kubuntu on the new 20.04 version. I haven't used KDE since KDE 4 came out a long time ago. The desktop environment has made quite some progress since then and it seems to me like the better desktop at this time.

Right now I'm struggling to figure out how to make default applications work. When you set your default applications in the settings, I would expect some of the shortcuts to launch my preferred app. For example, if I set the default terminal application to Terminator, and then hit the ctrl-alt-t hotkey, then I would expect the Terminator app to launch. Same thing with the file browser, if I set another preferred app as the default, I would expect it to launch when pressing Win-e.

However, hitting those hotkeys does not launch my default apps. Ctrl-alt-t still launches the Konsole terminal. I've looked into the settings and have found the shortcut was set in Global Shortcuts -> KDE Daemon -> Launch Konsole. To workaround this, I have disabled this shortcut and created my own custom shortcut to launch Terminator.

Regarding shortcuts, I'm disappointed there are no options to set a "default app" to be launched from a shortcut. When creating a new shortcut, you can only select an application from the list of already available apps from the application launcher. Am I missing something?

So my question is, how do I make my shortcuts launch my default application instead of a specific one? Is there a feature I'm missing? Is there a command line that can launch them as an alternative?

Thanks

You are not missing anything. Default applications and shortcuts are separate configurations. They are not tied together.