KDE Konsole Shortcut to Launch New Tab with different profile

Question

I've been trying to figure out how to set a short cut to launch a new tab, with a specific profile, but I can't seem to find an option. Effectively I want to emulate the highlighted Menu option below:

I can set shortcuts to Profiles in the Manage Profiles Pane, however, that changes the active tab's profile; not what I want (and in this case doesn't change the environment to Powershell). I can launch a new tab with a shortcut, but that uses the Default profile.

Nothing in the Configure Shortcuts screen shouts out that it will do this, and a search of "Konsole open new tab with profile shortcut" drew me to questions like Pressing opens a new tab in Konsole, Is there a keyboard shortcut to open a new Konsole tab? and Switch profile in Konsole from command line?; none of which address what I'm trying to achieve.

Can you actually set a shortcut for launching a new tab for a specific profile in Konsole?

Answer 1

TLDR

• Disable "Run all Konsole windows in a single process" in konsole settings
• install xdotool
• Create a global shortcut with the follwing command, replacing [profile_name] with your profile's name:

qdbus org.kde.konsole-$(xdotool getwindowpid $(xdotool search --class "konsole" | tail -1)) /Windows/1 newSession "[profile_name]"; xdotool windowactivate $(xdotool search --class "konsole" | tail -1)

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There doesn't seem to be a dedicated shortcut for this, and as this post suggests, the default behaviour seems to have changed in recent versions.

However, there is a workaround. As explained here, you can open a new session (=tab) by sending a qdbus command. The problem with this is that you need to run that command in a shell inside the konsole window, otherwise the environment variables will not be set. Now you could bind the following command to a keyboard shortcut in bash using bind:

qdbus $KONSOLE_DBUS_SERVICE $KONSOLE_DBUS_WINDOW newSession "[profile_name]"

...but using bind is not really user friendly and especially not shell independent. Alternatively, you can specify an alias if that is acceptable.

If you want to have a keyboard shortcut that is independent from the shell you are currently using, you'll need to use a global shortcut and inevitably lose the environment variables.

Using a global keyboard shortcut

The process depends on the "Run all Konsole windows in a single process" setting in "Settings -> Configure Konsole".

All windows in one process

If that is enabled, there will be one qdbus service called org.kde.konsole and each window will be an object Windows/1, Windows/2 etc. So if you only use one konsole window, the following command would be sufficient for a global keyboard shortcut:

qdbus org.kde.konsole Windows/1 newSession "[profile_name]"

One process for each window

If konsole is configured to spawn a new process for each window, you'll have some additional options. In that case, there will be one qdbus service for each window called org.kde.konsole-[process_id], each with only one object Windows/1.

To retrieve the id of the process owning the konsole window, we can use xdotool. In each of the following examples, replace [profile_name] with your profile's name:

open new tab in active konsole window

qdbus org.kde.konsole-$(xdotool getactivewindow getwindowpid) /Windows/1 newSession "[profile_name]"

open new tab in most recently used (or active) konsole window

qdbus org.kde.konsole-$(xdotool getwindowpid $(xdotool search --class "konsole" | tail -1)) /Windows/1 newSession "[profile_name]"

open new tab in most recently used (or active) konsole window and bring it to front

qdbus org.kde.konsole-$(xdotool getwindowpid $(xdotool search --class "konsole" | tail -1)) /Windows/1 newSession "[profile_name]"; xdotool windowactivate $(xdotool search --class "konsole" | tail -1)