How to “Snoop” a ContextMenu?

Question

I have a ContextMenu that uses a CompositeCollection for its ItemsSource. One of the items (the one that is in a bound collection, as opposed to hard-coded) is displayed differently from the rest.

I didn't see anything obvious in the XAML as to why this is, so I thought I would use Snoop to look at the actual rendered style (and find the difference). However, whenever I activate the Snoop window to look for the Context Menu, it closes the menu!

Is there a way to use Snoop (or a similar tool) to inspect a ContextMenu ?

Answer 1

Whenever user performs any action outside of an opened ContextMenu will get closed. This is default behaviour of the ContextMenu , But still Snoop provides all the informations about the ContextMenu and it's MenuItems in the VisualTreeView of the Snoop window on Left side. If you want to snoop a specift ContextMenuItem

• Attach your application with the Snoop
• Press Shift+Ctrl and mouse over to the ContextMenuItem you want to snoop which shows a Red border. Also the same control will be selected in the Treeview of the Snoop window

Answer 2

• Select your WPF application in Snoop
• Open the context menu
• Press Shift+Ctrl and move the mouse pointer to one of the context menu items.