Best way to implement keyboard shortcuts in a Windows Forms application?

Mr_Brownstone_5290 0
Viewed 241937

I'm looking for a best way to implement common Windows keyboard shortcuts (for example Ctrl+F, Ctrl+N) in my Windows Forms application in C#.

The application has a main form which hosts many child forms (one at a time). When a user hits Ctrl+F, I'd like to show a custom search form. The search form would depend on the current open child form in the application.

I was thinking of using something like this in the ChildForm_KeyDown event:

   if (e.KeyCode == Keys.F && Control.ModifierKeys == Keys.Control)
        // Show search form

But this doesn't work. The event doesn't even fire when you press a key. What is the solution?

keyboard-shortcuts winforms c#
9 Answers

You probably forgot to set the form's KeyPreview property to True. Overriding the ProcessCmdKey() method is the generic solution:

protected override bool ProcessCmdKey(ref Message msg, Keys keyData) {
  if (keyData == (Keys.Control | Keys.F)) {
    MessageBox.Show("What the Ctrl+F?");
    return true;
  }
  return base.ProcessCmdKey(ref msg, keyData);
}
nobugz_170340

The best way is to use menu mnemonics, i.e. to have menu entries in your main form that get assigned the keyboard shortcut you want. Then everything else is handled internally and all you have to do is to implement the appropriate action that gets executed in the Click event handler of that menu entry.

user_19680

If you have a menu then changing ShortcutKeys property of the ToolStripMenuItem should do the trick.

If not, you could create one and set its visible property to false.

Corin_17360

The VB.NET version of Hans' answer.

(There's a ProcessCmdKey function template in Visual Studio.)

  Protected Overrides Function ProcessCmdKey(ByRef msg As Message, keyData As Keys) As Boolean

    If (keyData = (Keys.Control Or Keys.F)) Then
      ' call your sub here, like
      SearchDialog()
      Return True
    End If

    Return MyBase.ProcessCmdKey(msg, keyData)
  End Function

End Class
user_35855000
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