Qt - QPushButton shortcut not trigering

Question

I am having trouble with binding a shortcut to a QPushButton through QtCreator.

What I did is to place a button in a QDialog and to use auto-connect to connect the clicked() signal to a slot. I then set up the property QAbstractButton::shortcut to Ctrl + N in the form editor.

When I click the button, the slot gets triggered, but when I press the shortcut, nothing happens.

Here is the code for the ui file :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ui version="4.0">
 <class>Dialog</class>
 <widget class="QDialog" name="Dialog">
  <property name="geometry">
   <rect>
    <x>0</x>
    <y>0</y>
    <width>400</width>
    <height>300</height>
   </rect>
  </property>
  <property name="windowTitle">
   <string>Dialog</string>
  </property>
  <widget class="QPushButton" name="pushButton">
   <property name="text">
    <string>PushButton</string>
   </property>
   <property name="shortcut">
    <string>Ctrl+N</string>
   </property>
  </widget>
 </widget>
 <resources/>
 <connections/>
</ui>

And here is the code for my Dialog class (header and source have been merged):

namespace Ui {
class Dialog;
}

class Dialog : public QDialog
{
    Q_OBJECT

public:
    explicit Dialog(QWidget *parent = 0) :
        QDialog(parent), ui(new Ui::Dialog)
    {
        ui->setupUi(this);
    }

private slots:
    void on_pushButton_clicked()
    {
        qDebug() << "click!";
    }

private:
    Ui::Dialog *ui;
};

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
    QApplication app(argc, argv);
    Dialog dialog;
    dialog.show();
    return app.exec();
}

I managed to make it work with an action in the menubar, I don't understand why it does not seem to work the same.

I am using Qt 5.8.0.

Answer 1

You are probably working on a macOS, for which the ControlModifier corresponds with the Command keys and the MetaModifier corresponds to the Control key as documented by Qt :

Note : On macOS, the ControlModifier value corresponds to the Command keys on the Macintosh keyboard, and the MetaModifier value corresponds to the Control keys.

Also the documentation of QKeySequence gives relevant information:

Note : On macOS, references to "Ctrl", Qt::CTRL, Qt::Key_Control and Qt::ControlModifier correspond to the Command keys on the Macintosh keyboard, and references to "Meta", Qt::META, Qt::Key_Meta and Qt::MetaModifier correspond to the Control keys.

So, you should press Command + N to trigger the shortcut.

Answer 2

I got around the problem by creating a menubar action triggering the same slot as the button.

Since the shortcuts work (in my case) only with menubar actions, I believe this is a good alternative, because the button that I wanted to have a shortcut triggered one of the main slots of my application.

I did the following:

• Replace the button's auto-connected slot with the action's one
• Connect the button's clicked() signal to the action's triggered() signal
• Set the shortcut to the action