How to Add a Keyboard Shortcut to a Menu in JavaFX

In this article, we show how to add a keyboard shortcut to a menu in JavaFX.

This is so that instead of clicking a menu item to access it, it can be accessed by pressing the Alt key followed by the first letter in the menu item.

So if one of the menus in the menu bar is File, then to access it, a user can click Alt + F. This will drop down the File menu, displaying all of its menu items.

In JavaFX, we can add this functionality very easily to a menu.

In order to do so, all you have to do is add an underscore(_) before the name of the menu.

This is shown in the code below.

Menu filemenu= new Menu ("_File");

Simply by adding that underscore (_) before File means we have created a way for a user this File menu through a keyboard shortcut (Alt + F).

This way, a user does not have to have a mouse and drag it to the File menu and click it. It can also be accessed by keyboard shortcut.

In our full Java code example shown below, we make both the File menu and the Edit menu both keyboard shortcut accessible. So that to access the File menu, the user presses Alt + F. To access the Edit menu, the user pressed Alt + E.

import javafx.application.Application; import static javafx.application.Application.launch; import javafx.application.Platform; import javafx.scene.Scene; import javafx.scene.control.Menu; import javafx.scene.control.MenuBar; import javafx.scene.control.MenuItem; import javafx.scene.control.SeparatorMenuItem; import javafx.scene.layout.BorderPane; import javafx.stage.Stage; public class MenuProgram extends Application { static String result[]; @Override public void start(Stage primaryStage) { primaryStage.setTitle("Software Program"); //Menu name Menu filemenu= new Menu ("_File"); //Create and add menu items to menu MenuItem newproject= new MenuItem("New Project..."); filemenu.getItems().add(newproject); MenuItem newfile= new MenuItem("New File..."); filemenu.getItems().add(newfile); filemenu.getItems().add(new SeparatorMenuItem()); MenuItem openproject= new MenuItem("Open Project..."); filemenu.getItems().add(openproject); MenuItem openfile= new MenuItem("Open File..."); filemenu.getItems().add(openfile); filemenu.getItems().add(new SeparatorMenuItem()); MenuItem save= new MenuItem("Save"); filemenu.getItems().add(save); MenuItem saveas= new MenuItem("Save As..."); filemenu.getItems().add(saveas); MenuItem saveall= new MenuItem("Save All"); filemenu.getItems().add(saveall); filemenu.getItems().add(new SeparatorMenuItem()); MenuItem exit= new MenuItem("Exit"); filemenu.getItems().add(exit); Menu editmenu= new Menu("_Edit"); MenuItem cut= new MenuItem("Cut"); editmenu.getItems().add(cut); MenuItem copy= new MenuItem("Copy"); editmenu.getItems().add(copy); MenuItem paste= new MenuItem("Paste"); editmenu.getItems().add(paste); //Main menu bar MenuBar menubar= new MenuBar(); menubar.getMenus().addAll(filemenu, editmenu); BorderPane layout= new BorderPane(); layout.setTop(menubar); Scene scene1= new Scene(layout, 300, 300); primaryStage.setScene(scene1); primaryStage.show(); } public static void main(String[] args) { launch(args); } }

So we import all the packages we need, create our class, override the start method, and set the title of our stage.

We then create our menu bar, which will hold all the menus we create. In this code, we create a File menu and an Edit Menu.

We then create the File menu. When creating the File menu, when passing the name of the menu, we place an underscore (_) before the File menu. This gives the keyboard shortcut to the File menu when the user presses Alt + F.

We do the same for the Edit menu. When creating this menu, we pass in an underscore before Edit. This menu can now be accessed by pressing Alt + E.

You will notice that when you have the window opened and you press down Alt, the Menus will have the first letter underlined. This signals to the user that if the user presses down this letter, it will open up the menu, showing its menu items.

And this is all that is necessary to give keyboard shortcuts to menus in JavaFX.

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