Once the application is started, simply press F12 (by default) to open the console. However, on mac's, F12 is assigned to "right click" To solve this problem - use the following instructions: Run Yakuake. In a terminal, run the command killall -9 yakuake This is so that the default configuration files are created (only needed if you have never ran yakuake before) Next, edit the following file ~/.trinity/share/config/yakuakerc which should look something like this [Options] background=true focus=false height=30 location=80 screen=1 steps=20 tabs=true width=50 Add the following to the file: [Global Shortcuts] AccessKey=F11 And save the file. Now, restart yakuake, and you should be able to use the F11 key to access yakuake!