The problem is that your desktop environment's shortcut handler intercepts Alt+V before KeePassXC ever sees it, so the internal keybinding never fires. And when pgrep finds the process running, your command simply does nothing.

The fix is to use KeePassXC's --auto-type CLI flag, which sends the auto-type signal to a running instance:

Command for your custom shortcut (Alt+V):

bash -c 'pgrep -x keepassxc > /dev/null && keepassxc --auto-type || keepassxc'

Not sure how keepass behaves though. Maybe you don't need the condition at all and can just run keepassxc --auto-type from the shortcut and if there is no running instance it will start it.

If you use Hyperland, you can simply setup the keybind in hypr.config (also makes it easier to change your default file manager, etc)

So how did you solve it?