kando-menu
Please add a way to activate an already running app, instead of launching a new instance.
Description
Kando is great and I would love to use it, but it's missing one feature that is really important for me:
When clicking an app shortcut, I would like a way to switch to it if it's already running. As things are at the moment, Kando just opens a new instance of it.
Affected Desktop Environments
All
Additional Information
No response
Hi there! Thanks for the suggestion! This would be cool indeed. Yet it will not be easily possible on all platforms. For instance on Linux / Wayland this will be close to impossible.
So maybe this would only work on selected platforms. In the meantime, you could check your applications - some may provide a commandline switch which you could add to the command to focus a running instance rather then opening a new window.
Also, if you are on Windows, a lot can be done with small AutoHotkey Scripts which you run from Kando. With this, it should be possible already today.
On Linux with X11 you can also achieve this with either jumpapp or wmctrl programs. They can be used to either activate an existing window or open up a new window of a program if it's not currently open.
eg:
jumpapp -f dolphin # activate or open dolphin
# if you want more flexibility for scripting, use wmctrl which is what jumpapp uses under the hood
# Try to activate Discord, otherwise (if it's not open) run discord and then maximize the window
wmctrl -a "- Discord" 2>/dev/null || { 'discord' &>/dev/null & }; wmctrl -r "- Discord" -b add,maximized
Just the "Run command" menu item and then give it a custom icon. (Schneegans, the ability to choose system icon theme icons in Linux is fantastic btw, thank you!)
if ur using Linux X11, this is the script
wmctrl -x -a "$1" || $2
from: https://www.willharris.dev/garden/run-or-raise
