QMenuBar¶

PyQt6.QtWidgets.QMenuBar: Inherits from QWidget.

Description¶

The QMenuBar class provides a horizontal menu bar.

A menu bar consists of a list of pull-down menu items. You add menu items with addMenu(). For example, assuming that menubar is a pointer to a QMenuBar and fileMenu is a pointer to a QMenu, the following statement inserts the menu into the menu bar:

# menubar->addMenu(fileMenu);

The ampersand in the menu item’s text sets Alt+F as a shortcut for this menu. (You can use “&&” to get a real ampersand in the menu bar.)

There is no need to lay out a menu bar. It automatically sets its own geometry to the top of the parent widget and changes it appropriately whenever the parent is resized.

Usage¶

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.

Platform Dependent Look and Feel¶

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.

QMenuBar as a Global Menu Bar¶

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 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. If an entry is moved its slots will still fire as if it was in the original place.

The merging functionality is based on the menuRole() of the menu entries. If an item has TextHeuristicRole, the role is determined by string matching the title using the following heuristics:

String matches	Placement	Notes
about.*	Application Menu \| About <application name>	The application name is fetched from the `Info.plist` file (see note below). If this entry is not found no About item will appear in the Application Menu.
config, options, setup, settings or preferences	Application Menu \| Preferences	If this entry is not found the Settings item will be disabled
quit or exit	Application Menu \| Quit <application name>	If this entry is not found a default Quit item will be created to call quit()

You can override this behavior by setting the menuRole() property to NoRole.

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 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.

Examples¶

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

Methods¶

__init__(parent: QWidget = None): Constructs a menu bar with parent parent.

actionAt(QPoint) → QAction: Returns the QAction at pt. Returns nullptr if there is no action at pt or if the location has a separator.

See also

addAction(), addSeparator().

actionEvent(QActionEvent): TODO

actionGeometry(QAction) → QRect: Returns the geometry of action act as a QRect.

See also

actionAt().

activeAction() → QAction: Returns the QAction that is currently highlighted, if any, else nullptr.

See also

setActiveAction().

addMenu(QMenu) → QAction

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

Note: The returned QAction object can be used to hide the corresponding menu.

See also

addAction(), menuAction().

addMenu(Optional[str]) → QMenu: Appends a new QMenu with title to the menu bar. The menu bar takes ownership of the menu. Returns the new menu.

See also

addAction(), menuAction().

addMenu(QIcon, Optional[str]) → QMenu: Appends a new QMenu with icon and title to the menu bar. The menu bar takes ownership of the menu. Returns the new menu.

See also

addAction(), menuAction().

addSeparator() → QAction: Appends a separator to the menu.

changeEvent(QEvent): TODO

clear()

Removes all the actions from the menu bar.

Note: On macOS, menu items that have been merged to the system menu bar are not removed by this function. One way to handle this would be to remove the extra actions yourself. You can set the MenuRole on the different menus, so that you know ahead of time which menu items get merged and which do not. Then decide what to recreate or remove yourself.

See also

removeAction().

cornerWidget(corner: Corner = TopRightCorner) → QWidget

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

Note: Using a corner other than TopRightCorner or TopLeftCorner will result in a warning.

See also

setCornerWidget().

event(QEvent) → bool: TODO

eventFilter(QObject, QEvent) → bool: TODO

focusInEvent(QFocusEvent): TODO

focusOutEvent(QFocusEvent): TODO

heightForWidth(int) → int: TODO

initStyleOption(QStyleOptionMenuItem, QAction): 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.

See also

initFrom(), initStyleOption().

insertMenu(QAction, QMenu) → QAction: This convenience function inserts menu before action before and returns the menus menuAction().

See also

insertAction(), addMenu().

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

See also

insertAction(), addSeparator().

isDefaultUp() → bool: TODO

isNativeMenuBar() → bool: TODO

keyPressEvent(QKeyEvent): TODO

leaveEvent(QEvent): TODO

minimumSizeHint() → QSize: TODO

mouseMoveEvent(QMouseEvent): TODO

mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent): TODO

mouseReleaseEvent(QMouseEvent): TODO

paintEvent(QPaintEvent): TODO

resizeEvent(QResizeEvent): TODO

setActiveAction(QAction): Sets the currently highlighted action to act.

See also

activeAction().

setCornerWidget(QWidget, corner: Corner = TopRightCorner)

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.

Note: Using a corner other than TopRightCorner or TopLeftCorner will result in a warning.

See also

cornerWidget().

setDefaultUp(bool): See also

isDefaultUp().

setNativeMenuBar(bool): See also

isNativeMenuBar().

setVisible(bool): TODO

sizeHint() → QSize: TODO

timerEvent(QTimerEvent): TODO

Signals¶

hovered(QAction)

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.

See also

triggered, hovered.

triggered(QAction)

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.

Note: QMenuBar has to have ownership of the QMenu in order this signal to work.

Normally, you connect each menu action to a single slot using 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.

See also

hovered, triggered.