electron menu accelerator not working - electron

Question

I am going through the Electron Fundamentals course on Pluralsight (Trent, 2016). I can't get the accelerator to work on my "Quit" menu item. Below is my entire main.js file. The menu is created successfully from what I can tell (picture below), and clicking directly on the Quit menu item does shut down the application, but the Alt+W key combination does not. I am on Windows 10. What am I missing?
const electron = require('electron');
const app = electron.app;
const BrowserWindow = electron.BrowserWindow;
const Menu = electron.Menu;
app.on('ready', _ => {
new BrowserWindow();
const template = [
{
label: "File",
submenu: [{
label: 'About',
click: _ => {
console.log('clicked');
}
},
{
type: 'separator'
},
{
label: 'Quit',
accelerator: 'Alt+W',
click: _ => {
app.quit();
}
}]
}];
const menu = Menu.buildFromTemplate(template);
Menu.setApplicationMenu(menu);
});

Answer 1

The accelerator String is no longer supported. The documentation was updated in v1.4.5 to clarify how to define shortcuts using globalShortcut.
Accelerator Documentation: Shortcuts are registered with the globalShortcut module using the register method, i.e.
const {app, globalShortcut} = require('electron')
app.on('ready', () => {
// Register a 'CommandOrControl+Y' shortcut listener.
globalShortcut.register('CommandOrControl+Y', () => {
// Do stuff when Y and either Command/Control is pressed.
})
})
So change your code to this
const electron = require('electron');
const app = electron.app;
const BrowserWindow = electron.BrowserWindow;
const Menu = electron.Menu;
const globalShortcut = electron.globalShortcut;
app.on('ready', _ => {
new BrowserWindow();
// Declare shortcuts
globalShortcut.register('Alt+W', () => app.quit());
const template = [
{
label: "File",
submenu: [{
label: 'About',
click: _ => {
console.log('clicked');
}
},
{
type: 'separator'
},
{
label: 'Quit',
click: _ => {
app.quit();
}
}]
}];
const menu = Menu.buildFromTemplate(template);
Menu.setApplicationMenu(menu);
});

Answer 2

looks like on Windows it needs something loaded on the BrowserWindow. Placing the loadURL make it work. Need to try something besides loadURL though..
app.on('ready', _ => {
mainWindow = new BrowserWindow()
mainWindow.loadURL('https://github.com')
const name = electron.app.getName()
const template = [
{
label: name,
submenu: [{
label: `About ${name}` ,
click: console.log('clicked!')
},{
type:'separator'
},{
label:'Quit',
click: _ =>{
app.quit()
},
accelerator:'CmdOrCtrl+Q'
}
]
}
]
const menu = Menu.buildFromTemplate(template)
Menu.setApplicationMenu(menu)
})