EDIT: This guide no longer works because the Launchy extension is not compatible with recent Firefox versions! Use Plasma Browser Integration instead.



Even though I criticized Mozilla in the past on my blog, in the end I always returned to Firefox as my main browser, as it the most customizable browser while also (nowadays) very fast and stable.

Today I want to talk about how to marry to KDE Connect, one of the most awesome pieces of technology to come from KDE in recent years.

Everybody who once used KDE Connect is immediately hooked to it. Some say it even was the inspiration for Apple’s Continuity feature.

KDE Connect works both ways but the user interface mostly just exposes sending stuff from your phone to your PC which has been an annoyance for me.

Luckily it is solved now. Today I’ve read about indicator-kdeconnect by Viko Adi Rahmawan (EDIT: Looks like the project was abandoned. Bajoja forked the project and applied a few fixes recently. You can find it at https://github.com/Bajoja/indicator-kdeconnect).

indicator-kdeconnect is mostly a port of KDE Connect to desktops that use App Indicators, such as Ubuntu Unity. However it also comes with a very handy tool called kdeconnect-send that allows you to do just what I was missing: Send links and files from the PC to the phone.

Sending files is IMO not that important as KDE Connect allows to browse the phone’s file system (at least when the phone is running Android 4.4) but sending the current tab to read it on the go is where the fun is.

To do that you obviously first have to install KDE Connect on both your PC and Android device and then pair your devices.

Then install indicator-kdeconnect. For (K)Ubuntu the necessary steps are outlined here. I packaged the tool for Fedora myself, available here.

The third step is installing Launchy for Firefox.

The fourth and final step is to manually edit launchy.xml . Details how to do that are outlined in Launchy’s Preferences window.

The code you have to add to Launchy is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<configurations xmlns="http://launchy.mozdev.org/configurations">

<application>

<label>KDE Connect</label>

<type>1</type>

<command>/usr/bin/kdeconnect-send</command>

</application>

</configurations>

After you restarted Firefox you should have this button:



On Android it then looks like this in the notification drawer:



Have fun!

PS: I didn’t yet investigate why it’s not building under openSUSE. I send the spec file upstream. If you have a fix, please sent it upstream as well. Also no (Build)Requirements for Mageia are currently in the file. Again: If you have Mageia and want to make this tool available there as well, please send your additions directly upstream.