Working shotcuts with hidden menu

[FredoT63]

Environment

• TeXstudio: 4.9.2
• Qt: 6.10.2
• OS: Debian forky
• TeX distribution: texlive 2026.20260527-3

Expected behavior

I'd like a way to hide menu (all of them) and keep the shortcuts working. I don't see the benefits of blocking the shortcuts.

Actual behavior

When I hide a menu in the editor the shortcuts aren't working anymore.

Thank you very much for your great software (use it almost every day)
Have a nice day

[sunderme]

can you bet a bit more detailed what exactly you are doing ?

[FredoT63]

Description:
When hiding a menu in TeXstudio, all keyboard shortcuts associated with actions in that menu stop working.
The menu in question is the "Edit 2" menu (called "Idéfix" in the French translation), which contains the comment/uncomment actions (main/edit2/comment, main/edit2/uncomment).
Steps to reproduce:

Open Configure TeXstudio → Menus
Hide the "Edit 2" menu ("Idéfix" in French)
Try to use a shortcut from that menu (e.g. my custom shortcuts Ctrl+D for comment, Ctrl+Shift+D for uncomment)

Expected behavior:

Shortcuts should work independently of the visibility of their parent menu.
Actual behavior:

Shortcuts are disabled as soon as their parent menu is hidden.

Use case:

I want a fully clean interface with all menus hidden, while keeping all keyboard shortcuts functional.

[sunderme]

looks like qt automatically disables all actions if they invisible.

[octaeder]

maybe ask copilot

[FredoT63]

looks like qt automatically disables all actions if they invisible.

I understand this behaviour, but it feels wrong in the context of keyboard shortcuts. The whole purpose of a shortcut is to be a shortcut! It should remain usable even when parts of the application are hidden.

[FredoT63]

maybe ask copilot

I tried to ask Claude. The answer :

This is a known Qt behaviour, but it can be overridden. Qt disables actions when their parent widget is hidden, but there is a workaround at the application level.
In Qt, you can set the shortcut context of an action to Qt::ApplicationShortcut instead of the default Qt::WindowShortcut. With ApplicationShortcut, the shortcut remains active regardless of the visibility of the menu or widget it belongs to.
This would need to be fixed in the TeXstudio source code — specifically when actions are created and assigned to menus. It is not something configurable by the end user.
So the correct fix would be for TeXstudio developers to set hidden menu actions to Qt::ApplicationShortcut, or to explicitly re-enable shortcuts for hidden actions. Worth adding this to your bug report as a suggested fix.

Not sure if it should be considered as a bug or a feature request.

When I ask Claude : Would it be problematic to make this change?

The answer is :

Potentially yes, for two reasons:

1. Shortcut conflicts

Setting all actions to Qt::ApplicationShortcut means all shortcuts are permanently active, including those from context menus or secondary views (PDF viewer, etc.). This could create conflicts if two different actions share the same shortcut but are normally separated by their context.
2. Unexpected behaviour

Some shortcuts are intentionally disabled out of context — for example, a shortcut that only makes sense in the editor should probably not trigger when the focus is on the PDF viewer.
A safer intermediate solution:

Apply Qt::ApplicationShortcut only to actions whose parent menu has been explicitly hidden by the user, rather than to all actions globally. This would be a more targeted and less risky change.

Sorry can't really help more.

[sunderme]

Qt Documentation says (https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qaction.html):

An action will be disabled when all widgets to which it is added (with [QWidget::addAction](https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qwidget.html#addAction)()) are disabled or not visible. When an action is disabled, it is not possible to trigger it through its shortcut.

Hence, you are asking for extra functionality, working around qt behavior, so it is an enhancement and not easy to solve.

[FredoT63]

Qt Documentation says (https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qaction.html):

An action will be disabled when all widgets to which it is added (with [QWidget::addAction](https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qwidget.html#addAction)()) are disabled or not visible. When an action is disabled, it is not possible to trigger it through its shortcut.

Hence, you are asking for extra functionality, working around qt behavior, so it is an enhancement and not easy to solve.

Thank you for your answer. I completely understand.

I just wish there were a way to hide the menu bar without side effect.