KPilot consists of two parts: the KPilot daemon, which sits in the system tray and handles the actual communication with the handheld, and the normal KPilot program, which lets you configure the daemon and view the databases on your handheld. In normal operation, you will not need to use KPilot itself very much, since the daemon handles communication unobtrusively and synchronizes your data to KDE applications like KOrganizer and KNotes. KPilot is integrated into Kontact as well.

It is vital to configure KPilot before use. At the very least, you need to tell it which hardware device to use to communicate with your handheld. Configuration settings are described at length in the section on configuring KPilot.

Once KPilot is configured, you should make a backup of your handheld first. That is to be on the safe side. Once that is done, you can just leave the KPilot daemon running in the system tray, and all you need to do is press the HotSync® button, and changes in the handheld data and the KDE applications will be synchronized, so that the information matches again on both the handheld and the desktop.

Finally, KPilot can be used to install new programs and databases on your handheld.