QMenuBar Class

In most main window style applications you would use the menuBar() function provided in QMainWindow, adding QMenus to the menu bar and adding QActions to the pop-up menus.

Example (from the Menus example):

    fileMenu = menuBar()->addMenu(tr("&File"));
    fileMenu->addAction(newAct);

Menu items may be removed with removeAction().

Widgets can be added to menus by using instances of the QWidgetAction class to hold them. These actions can then be inserted into menus in the usual way; see the QMenu documentation for more details.

Different platforms have different requirements for the appearance of menu bars and their behavior when the user interacts with them. For example, Windows systems are often configured so that the underlined character mnemonics that indicate keyboard shortcuts for items in the menu bar are only shown when the Alt key is pressed.

On macOS and on certain Linux desktop environments such as Ubuntu Unity, QMenuBar is a wrapper for using the system-wide menu bar. If you have multiple menu bars in one dialog the outermost menu bar (normally inside a widget with widget flag Qt::Window) will be used for the system-wide menu bar.

Qt for macOS also provides a menu bar merging feature to make QMenuBar conform more closely to accepted macOS menu bar layout. The merging functionality is based on string matching the title of a QMenu entry. These strings are translated (using QObject::tr()) in the "QMenuBar" context. If an entry is moved its slots will still fire as if it was in the original place. The table below outlines the strings looked for and where the entry is placed if matched:

You can override this behavior by using the QAction::menuRole() property.

If you want all windows in a Mac application to share one menu bar, you must create a menu bar that does not have a parent. Create a parent-less menu bar this way:

QMenuBar *menuBar = new QMenuBar(nullptr);

Note: Do not call QMainWindow::menuBar() to create the shared menu bar, because that menu bar will have the QMainWindow as its parent. That menu bar would only be displayed for the parent QMainWindow.

Note: The text used for the application name in the macOS menu bar is obtained from the value set in the Info.plist file in the application's bundle. See Qt for macOS - Deployment for more information.

Note: On Linux, if the com.canonical.AppMenu.Registrar service is available on the D-Bus session bus, then Qt will communicate with it to install the application's menus into the global menu bar, as described.

The Menus example shows how to use QMenuBar and QMenu. The other main window application examples also provide menus using these classes.

See also QMenu, QShortcut, QAction, Introduction to Apple Human Interface Guidelines, Menus Example

This property holds the popup orientation

The default popup orientation. By default, menus pop "down" the screen. By setting the property to true, the menu will pop "up". You might call this for menus that are below the document to which they refer.

If the menu would not fit on the screen, the other direction is used automatically.

Access functions:

• bool isDefaultUp() const

• void setDefaultUp(bool)

This property holds whether or not a menubar will be used as a native menubar on platforms that support it

This property specifies whether or not the menubar should be used as a native menubar on platforms that support it. The currently supported platforms are macOS, and Linux desktops which use the com.canonical.dbusmenu D-Bus interface (such as Ubuntu Unity). If this property is true, the menubar is used in the native menubar and is not in the window of its parent; if false the menubar remains in the window. On other platforms, setting this attribute has no effect, and reading this attribute will always return false.

The default is to follow whether the Qt::AA_DontUseNativeMenuBar attribute is set for the application. Explicitly setting this property overrides the presence (or absence) of the attribute.

Access functions:

• bool isNativeMenuBar() const

• void setNativeMenuBar(bool nativeMenuBar)

Constructs a menu bar with parent parent.

Destroys the menu bar.

Returns the QAction at pt. Returns nullptr if there is no action at pt or if the location has a separator.

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Reimplements: QWidget::actionEvent(QActionEvent *event).

Returns the geometry of action act as a QRect.

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Returns the QAction that is currently highlighted, if any, else nullptr.

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Appends menu to the menu bar. Returns the menu's menuAction(). The menu bar does not take ownership of the menu.

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Appends a new QMenu with title to the menu bar. The menu bar takes ownership of the menu. Returns the new menu.

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Appends a new QMenu with icon and title to the menu bar. The menu bar takes ownership of the menu. Returns the new menu.

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Appends a separator to the menu.

Reimplements: QWidget::changeEvent(QEvent *event).

Removes all the actions from the menu bar.

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Returns the widget on the left of the first or on the right of the last menu item, depending on corner.

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Reimplements: QWidget::event(QEvent *event).

Reimplements: QObject::eventFilter(QObject *watched, QEvent *event).

Reimplements: QWidget::focusInEvent(QFocusEvent *event).

Reimplements: QWidget::focusOutEvent(QFocusEvent *event).

Reimplements: QWidget::heightForWidth(int w) const.

This signal is emitted when a menu action is highlighted; action is the action that caused the event to be sent.

Often this is used to update status information.

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Initialize option with the values from the menu bar and information from action. This method is useful for subclasses when they need a QStyleOptionMenuItem, but don't want to fill in all the information themselves.

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This convenience function inserts menu before action before and returns the menus menuAction().

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This convenience function creates a new separator action, i.e. an action with QAction::isSeparator() returning true. The function inserts the newly created action into this menu bar's list of actions before action before and returns it.

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Reimplements: QWidget::keyPressEvent(QKeyEvent *event).

Reimplements: QWidget::leaveEvent(QEvent *event).

Reimplements an access function for property: QWidget::minimumSizeHint.

Reimplements: QWidget::mouseMoveEvent(QMouseEvent *event).

Reimplements: QWidget::mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent *event).

Reimplements: QWidget::mouseReleaseEvent(QMouseEvent *event).

Reimplements: QWidget::paintEvent(QPaintEvent *event).

Reimplements: QWidget::resizeEvent(QResizeEvent *event).

Sets the currently highlighted action to act.

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This sets the given widget to be shown directly on the left of the first menu item, or on the right of the last menu item, depending on corner.

The menu bar takes ownership of widget, reparenting it into the menu bar. However, if the corner already contains a widget, this previous widget will no longer be managed and will still be a visible child of the menu bar.

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Reimplements an access function for property: QWidget::visible.

Reimplements an access function for property: QWidget::sizeHint.

Reimplements: QObject::timerEvent(QTimerEvent *event).

Returns the native NSMenu for this menu bar. Available on macOS only.

This function was introduced in Qt 5.2.

This signal is emitted when an action in a menu belonging to this menubar is triggered as a result of a mouse click; action is the action that caused the signal to be emitted.

Normally, you connect each menu action to a single slot using QAction::triggered(), but sometimes you will want to connect several items to a single slot (most often if the user selects from an array). This signal is useful in such cases.

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