The AccelLabel widget is a subclass of Label that also displays an accelerator key on the right of the label text, e.g. “Ctrl+S”. It is commonly used in menus to show the keyboard short-cuts for commands.

The accelerator key to display is typically not set explicitly (although it can be, with accelLabelSetAccel). Instead, the AccelLabel displays the accelerators which have been added to a particular widget. This widget is set by calling accelLabelSetAccelWidget.

For example, a MenuItem widget may have an accelerator added to emit the “activate” signal when the “Ctrl+S” key combination is pressed. A AccelLabel is created and added to the MenuItem, and accelLabelSetAccelWidget is called with the MenuItem as the second argument. The AccelLabel will now display “Ctrl+S” after its label.

Note that creating a MenuItem with menuItemNewWithLabel (or one of the similar functions for CheckMenuItem and RadioMenuItem) automatically adds a AccelLabel to the MenuItem and calls accelLabelSetAccelWidget to set it up for you.

A AccelLabel will only display accelerators which have AccelFlagsVisible set (see AccelFlags). A AccelLabel can display multiple accelerators and even signal names, though it is almost always used to display just one accelerator key.

Creating a simple menu item with an accelerator key.

C code

 GtkWidget *window = gtk_window_new (GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);
 GtkWidget *menu = gtk_menu_new ();
 GtkWidget *save_item;
 GtkAccelGroup *accel_group;

 // Create a GtkAccelGroup and add it to the window.
 accel_group = gtk_accel_group_new ();
 gtk_window_add_accel_group (GTK_WINDOW (window), accel_group);

 // Create the menu item using the convenience function.
 save_item = gtk_menu_item_new_with_label ("Save");
 gtk_widget_show (save_item);
 gtk_container_add (GTK_CONTAINER (menu), save_item);

 // Now add the accelerator to the GtkMenuItem. Note that since we
 // called gtk_menu_item_new_with_label() to create the GtkMenuItem
 // the GtkAccelLabel is automatically set up to display the
 // GtkMenuItem accelerators. We just need to make sure we use
 // GTK_ACCEL_VISIBLE here.
 gtk_widget_add_accelerator (save_item, "activate", accel_group,
                             GDK_KEY_s, GDK_CONTROL_MASK, GTK_ACCEL_VISIBLE);

CSS nodes

plain code

label
╰── accelerator

Like Label, GtkAccelLabel has a main CSS node with the name label. It adds a subnode with name accelerator.

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