Terminology

A menu item can be “selected”, this means that it is displayed in the prelight state, and if it has a submenu, that submenu will be popped up.

A menu is “active” when it is visible onscreen and the user is selecting from it. A menubar is not active until the user clicks on one of its menuitems. When a menu is active, passing the mouse over a submenu will pop it up.

There is also is a concept of the current menu and a current menu item. The current menu item is the selected menu item that is furthest down in the hierarchy. (Every active menu shell does not necessarily contain a selected menu item, but if it does, then the parent menu shell must also contain a selected menu item.) The current menu is the menu that contains the current menu item. It will always have a GTK grab and receive all key presses.

gtk_menu_shell_append ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_append (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell,
                       GtkWidget *child);

Adds a new GtkMenuItem to the end of the menu shell's item list.

gtk_menu_shell_prepend ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_prepend (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell,
                        GtkWidget *child);

Adds a new GtkMenuItem to the beginning of the menu shell's item list.

gtk_menu_shell_insert ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_insert (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell,
                       GtkWidget *child,
                       gint position);

Adds a new GtkMenuItem to the menu shell’s item list at the position indicated by position .

gtk_menu_shell_deactivate ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_deactivate (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell);

Deactivates the menu shell.

Typically this results in the menu shell being erased from the screen.

gtk_menu_shell_select_item ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_select_item (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell,
                            GtkWidget *menu_item);

Selects the menu item from the menu shell.

gtk_menu_shell_select_first ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_select_first (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell,
                             gboolean search_sensitive);

Select the first visible or selectable child of the menu shell; don’t select tearoff items unless the only item is a tearoff item.

Since 2.2

gtk_menu_shell_deselect ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_deselect (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell);

Deselects the currently selected item from the menu shell, if any.

gtk_menu_shell_activate_item ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_activate_item (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell,
                              GtkWidget *menu_item,
                              gboolean force_deactivate);

Activates the menu item within the menu shell.

gtk_menu_shell_cancel ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_cancel (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell);

Cancels the selection within the menu shell.

Since 2.4

gtk_menu_shell_set_take_focus ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_set_take_focus (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell,
                               gboolean take_focus);

If take_focus is TRUE (the default) the menu shell will take the keyboard focus so that it will receive all keyboard events which is needed to enable keyboard navigation in menus.

Setting take_focus to FALSE is useful only for special applications like virtual keyboard implementations which should not take keyboard focus.

The take_focus state of a menu or menu bar is automatically propagated to submenus whenever a submenu is popped up, so you don’t have to worry about recursively setting it for your entire menu hierarchy. Only when programmatically picking a submenu and popping it up manually, the take_focus property of the submenu needs to be set explicitly.

Note that setting it to FALSE has side-effects:

If the focus is in some other app, it keeps the focus and keynav in the menu doesn’t work. Consequently, keynav on the menu will only work if the focus is on some toplevel owned by the onscreen keyboard.

To avoid confusing the user, menus with take_focus set to FALSE should not display mnemonics or accelerators, since it cannot be guaranteed that they will work.

See also gdk_keyboard_grab()

Since 2.8

gtk_menu_shell_get_take_focus ()

gboolean
gtk_menu_shell_get_take_focus (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell);

Returns TRUE if the menu shell will take the keyboard focus on popup.

Since 2.8

gtk_menu_shell_get_selected_item ()

GtkWidget *
gtk_menu_shell_get_selected_item (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell);

Gets the currently selected item.

Since 3.0

gtk_menu_shell_get_parent_shell ()

GtkWidget *
gtk_menu_shell_get_parent_shell (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell);

Gets the parent menu shell.

The parent menu shell of a submenu is the GtkMenu or GtkMenuBar from which it was opened up.

Since 3.0

gtk_menu_shell_bind_model ()

void
gtk_menu_shell_bind_model (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell,
                           GMenuModel *model,
                           const gchar *action_namespace,
                           gboolean with_separators);

Establishes a binding between a GtkMenuShell and a GMenuModel.

The contents of shell are removed and then refilled with menu items according to model . When model changes, shell is updated. Calling this function twice on shell with different model will cause the first binding to be replaced with a binding to the new model. If model is NULL then any previous binding is undone and all children are removed.

with_separators determines if toplevel items (eg: sections) have separators inserted between them. This is typically desired for menus but doesn’t make sense for menubars.

If action_namespace is non-NULL then the effect is as if all actions mentioned in the model have their names prefixed with the namespace, plus a dot. For example, if the action “quit” is mentioned and action_namespace is “app” then the effective action name is “app.quit”.

This function uses GtkActionable to define the action name and target values on the created menu items. If you want to use an action group other than “app” and “win”, or if you want to use a GtkMenuShell outside of a GtkApplicationWindow, then you will need to attach your own action group to the widget hierarchy using gtk_widget_insert_action_group(). As an example, if you created a group with a “quit” action and inserted it with the name “mygroup” then you would use the action name “mygroup.quit” in your GMenuModel.

For most cases you are probably better off using gtk_menu_new_from_model() or gtk_menu_bar_new_from_model() or just directly passing the GMenuModel to gtk_application_set_app_menu() or gtk_application_set_menubar().

Since 3.6

struct GtkMenuShell

struct GtkMenuShell;

enum GtkMenuDirectionType

An enumeration representing directional movements within a menu.

The “take-focus” property

  “take-focus”               gboolean

A boolean that determines whether the menu and its submenus grab the keyboard focus. See gtk_menu_shell_set_take_focus() and gtk_menu_shell_get_take_focus().

Flags: Read / Write

Default value: TRUE

Since 2.8

The “activate-current” signal

void
user_function (GtkMenuShell *menushell,
               gboolean      force_hide,
               gpointer      user_data)

An action signal that activates the current menu item within the menu shell.

Flags: Action

The “cancel” signal

void
user_function (GtkMenuShell *menushell,
               gpointer      user_data)

An action signal which cancels the selection within the menu shell. Causes the “selection-done” signal to be emitted.

Flags: Action

The “cycle-focus” signal

void
user_function (GtkMenuShell    *menushell,
               GtkDirectionType direction,
               gpointer         user_data)

A keybinding signal which moves the focus in the given direction .

Flags: Action

The “deactivate” signal

void
user_function (GtkMenuShell *menushell,
               gpointer      user_data)

This signal is emitted when a menu shell is deactivated.

Flags: Run First

The “insert” signal

void
user_function (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell,
               GtkWidget    *child,
               gint          position,
               gpointer      user_data)

The ::insert signal is emitted when a new GtkMenuItem is added to a GtkMenuShell. A separate signal is used instead of GtkContainer::add because of the need for an additional position parameter.

The inverse of this signal is the GtkContainer::removed signal.

Flags: Run First

Since 3.2

The “move-current” signal

void
user_function (GtkMenuShell        *menushell,
               GtkMenuDirectionType direction,
               gpointer             user_data)

An keybinding signal which moves the current menu item in the direction specified by direction .

Flags: Action

The “move-selected” signal

gboolean
user_function (GtkMenuShell *menu_shell,
               gint          distance,
               gpointer      user_data)

The ::move-selected signal is emitted to move the selection to another item.

Flags: Run Last

Since 2.12

The “selection-done” signal

void
user_function (GtkMenuShell *menushell,
               gpointer      user_data)

This signal is emitted when a selection has been completed within a menu shell.

Flags: Run First