Gtk.Application¶

Subclasses:: None

Methods¶

Inherited:: Gio.Application (39), GObject.Object (37), Gio.ActionGroup (14), Gio.ActionMap (5)
Structs:: GObject.ObjectClass (5)

class	`new` (application_id, flags)
	`add_accelerator` (accelerator, action_name, parameter)
	`add_window` (window)
	`get_accels_for_action` (detailed_action_name)
	`get_actions_for_accel` (accel)
	`get_active_window` ()
	`get_app_menu` ()
	`get_menu_by_id` (id)
	`get_menubar` ()
	`get_window_by_id` (id)
	`get_windows` ()
	`inhibit` (window, flags, reason)
	`is_inhibited` (flags)
	`list_action_descriptions` ()
	`prefers_app_menu` ()
	`remove_accelerator` (action_name, parameter)
	`remove_window` (window)
	`set_accels_for_action` (detailed_action_name, accels)
	`set_app_menu` (app_menu)
	`set_menubar` (menubar)
	`uninhibit` (cookie)

Virtual Methods¶

Inherited:: Gio.Application (15), GObject.Object (7), Gio.ActionGroup (14), Gio.ActionMap (3)

	`do_window_added` (window)
	`do_window_removed` (window)

Properties¶

Inherited:: Gio.Application (9)

Name	Type	Flags	Short Description
`active-window`	`Gtk.Window`	r	The window which most recently had focus
`app-menu`	`Gio.MenuModel`	r/w	The `Gio.MenuModel` for the application menu
`menubar`	`Gio.MenuModel`	r/w	The `Gio.MenuModel` for the menubar
`register-session`	`bool`	r/w	Register with the session manager
`screensaver-active`	`bool`	r	Whether the screensaver is active

Signals¶

Inherited:: Gio.Application (7), GObject.Object (1), Gio.ActionGroup (4)

Name	Short Description
`query-end`	Emitted when the session manager is about to end the session, only if `Gtk.Application` `::register-session` is `True`.
`window-added`	Emitted when a `Gtk.Window` is added to application through `Gtk.Application.add_window`().
`window-removed`	Emitted when a `Gtk.Window` is removed from application, either as a side-effect of being destroyed or explicitly through `Gtk.Application.remove_window`().

Fields¶

Inherited:: Gio.Application (7), GObject.Object (1), Gio.ActionGroup (4)

Name	Type	Access	Description
parent	`Gio.Application`	r

Class Details¶

class Gtk.Application(**kwargs)¶

Bases:: Gio.Application
Abstract:: No
Structure:: Gtk.ApplicationClass

Gtk.Application is a class that handles many important aspects of a GTK+ application in a convenient fashion, without enforcing a one-size-fits-all application model.

Currently, Gtk.Application handles GTK+ initialization, application uniqueness, session management, provides some basic scriptability and desktop shell integration by exporting actions and menus and manages a list of toplevel windows whose life-cycle is automatically tied to the life-cycle of your application.

While Gtk.Application works fine with plain Gtk.Windows, it is recommended to use it together with Gtk.ApplicationWindow.

When GDK threads are enabled, Gtk.Application will acquire the GDK lock when invoking actions that arrive from other processes. The GDK lock is not touched for local action invocations. In order to have actions invoked in a predictable context it is therefore recommended that the GDK lock be held while invoking actions locally with Gio.ActionGroup.activate_action(). The same applies to actions associated with Gtk.ApplicationWindow and to the “activate” and “open” Gio.Application methods.

Automatic resources

Gtk.Application will automatically load menus from the Gtk.Builder resource located at “gtk/menus.ui”, relative to the application’s resource base path (see Gio.Application.set_resource_base_path()). The menu with the ID “app-menu” is taken as the application’s app menu and the menu with the ID “menubar” is taken as the application’s menubar. Additional menus (most interesting submenus) can be named and accessed via Gtk.Application.get_menu_by_id() which allows for dynamic population of a part of the menu structure.

If the resources “gtk/menus-appmenu.ui” or “gtk/menus-traditional.ui” are present then these files will be used in preference, depending on the value of Gtk.Application.prefers_app_menu(). If the resource “gtk/menus-common.ui” is present it will be loaded as well. This is useful for storing items that are referenced from both “gtk/menus-appmenu.ui” and “gtk/menus-traditional.ui”.

It is also possible to provide the menus manually using Gtk.Application.set_app_menu() and Gtk.Application.set_menubar().

Gtk.Application will also automatically setup an icon search path for the default icon theme by appending “icons” to the resource base path. This allows your application to easily store its icons as resources. See Gtk.IconTheme.add_resource_path() for more information.

If there is a resource located at “gtk/help-overlay.ui” which defines a Gtk.ShortcutsWindow with ID “help_overlay” then Gtk.Application associates an instance of this shortcuts window with each Gtk.ApplicationWindow and sets up keyboard accelerators (Control-F1 and Control-?) to open it. To create a menu item that displays the shortcuts window, associate the item with the action win.show-help-overlay.

A simple application

A simple example

Gtk.Application optionally registers with a session manager of the users session (if you set the Gtk.Application :register-session property) and offers various functionality related to the session life-cycle.

An application can block various ways to end the session with the Gtk.Application.inhibit() function. Typical use cases for this kind of inhibiting are long-running, uninterruptible operations, such as burning a CD or performing a disk backup. The session manager may not honor the inhibitor, but it can be expected to inform the user about the negative consequences of ending the session while inhibitors are present.

See Also

HowDoI: Using GtkApplication, Getting Started with GTK+: Basics

classmethod new(application_id, flags)[source]¶

Parameters:

application_id (str or None) – The application ID.
flags (Gio.ApplicationFlags) – the application flags

Returns:

a new Gtk.Application instance

Return type:

Gtk.Application

Creates a new Gtk.Application instance.

When using Gtk.Application, it is not necessary to call Gtk.init() manually. It is called as soon as the application gets registered as the primary instance.

Concretely, Gtk.init() is called in the default handler for the Gio.Application ::startup signal. Therefore, Gtk.Application subclasses should chain up in their Gio.Application ::startup handler before using any GTK+ API.

Note that commandline arguments are not passed to Gtk.init(). All GTK+ functionality that is available via commandline arguments can also be achieved by setting suitable environment variables such as G_DEBUG, so this should not be a big problem. If you absolutely must support GTK+ commandline arguments, you can explicitly call Gtk.init() before creating the application instance.

If non-None, the application ID must be valid. See Gio.Application.id_is_valid().

If no application ID is given then some features (most notably application uniqueness) will be disabled. A null application ID is only allowed with GTK+ 3.6 or later.

New in version 3.0.

add_accelerator(accelerator, action_name, parameter)[source]¶

Parameters:

accelerator (str) – accelerator string
action_name (str) – the name of the action to activate
parameter (GLib.Variant or None) – parameter to pass when activating the action, or None if the action does not accept an activation parameter

Installs an accelerator that will cause the named action to be activated when the key combination specificed by accelerator is pressed.

accelerator must be a string that can be parsed by Gtk.accelerator_parse(), e.g. “<Primary>q” or “<Control><Alt>p”.

action_name must be the name of an action as it would be used in the app menu, i.e. actions that have been added to the application are referred to with an “app.” prefix, and window-specific actions with a “win.” prefix.

Gtk.Application also extracts accelerators out of “accel” attributes in the Gio.MenuModels passed to Gtk.Application.set_app_menu() and Gtk.Application.set_menubar(), which is usually more convenient than calling this function for each accelerator.

New in version 3.4.

Deprecated since version 3.14: Use Gtk.Application.set_accels_for_action() instead

add_window(window)[source]¶

Parameters:: window (Gtk.Window) – a Gtk.Window

Adds a window to self.

This call can only happen after the self has started; typically, you should add new application windows in response to the emission of the Gio.Application ::activate signal.

This call is equivalent to setting the Gtk.Window :application property of window to self.

Normally, the connection between the application and the window will remain until the window is destroyed, but you can explicitly remove it with Gtk.Application.remove_window().

GTK+ will keep the self running as long as it has any windows.

New in version 3.0.

get_accels_for_action(detailed_action_name)[source]¶

Parameters:: detailed_action_name (str) – a detailed action name, specifying an action and target to obtain accelerators for
Returns:: accelerators for detailed_action_name, as a None-terminated array. Free with GLib.strfreev() when no longer needed
Return type:: [str]

Gets the accelerators that are currently associated with the given action.

New in version 3.12.

get_actions_for_accel(accel)[source]¶

Parameters:: accel (str) – an accelerator that can be parsed by Gtk.accelerator_parse()
Returns:: a None-terminated array of actions for accel
Return type:: [str]

Returns the list of actions (possibly empty) that accel maps to. Each item in the list is a detailed action name in the usual form.

This might be useful to discover if an accel already exists in order to prevent installation of a conflicting accelerator (from an accelerator editor or a plugin system, for example). Note that having more than one action per accelerator may not be a bad thing and might make sense in cases where the actions never appear in the same context.

In case there are no actions for a given accelerator, an empty array is returned. None is never returned.

It is a programmer error to pass an invalid accelerator string. If you are unsure, check it with Gtk.accelerator_parse() first.

New in version 3.14.

get_active_window()[source]¶

Returns:: the active window, or None if there isn’t one.
Return type:: Gtk.Window or None

Gets the “active” window for the application.

The active window is the one that was most recently focused (within the application). This window may not have the focus at the moment if another application has it — this is just the most recently-focused window within this application.

New in version 3.6.

get_app_menu()[source]¶

Returns:: the application menu of self or None if no application menu has been set.
Return type:: Gio.MenuModel or None

Returns the menu model that has been set with Gtk.Application.set_app_menu().

New in version 3.4.

get_menu_by_id(id)[source]¶

Parameters:: id (str) – the id of the menu to look up
Returns:: Gets the menu with the given id from the automatically loaded resources
Return type:: Gio.Menu

Gets a menu from automatically loaded resources. See Automatic resources for more information.

New in version 3.14.

get_menubar()[source]¶

Returns:: the menubar for windows of self
Return type:: Gio.MenuModel

Returns the menu model that has been set with Gtk.Application.set_menubar().

New in version 3.4.

get_window_by_id(id)[source]¶

Parameters:: id (int) – an identifier number
Returns:: the window with ID id, or None if there is no window with this ID
Return type:: Gtk.Window or None

Returns the Gtk.ApplicationWindow with the given ID.

The ID of a Gtk.ApplicationWindow can be retrieved with Gtk.ApplicationWindow.get_id().

New in version 3.6.

get_windows()[source]¶

Returns:: a GLib.List of Gtk.Window
Return type:: [Gtk.Window]

Gets a list of the Gtk.Windows associated with self.

The list is sorted by most recently focused window, such that the first element is the currently focused window. (Useful for choosing a parent for a transient window.)

The list that is returned should not be modified in any way. It will only remain valid until the next focus change or window creation or deletion.

New in version 3.0.

inhibit(window, flags, reason)[source]¶

Parameters:

window (Gtk.Window or None) – a Gtk.Window, or None
flags (Gtk.ApplicationInhibitFlags) – what types of actions should be inhibited
reason (str or None) – a short, human-readable string that explains why these operations are inhibited

Returns:

A non-zero cookie that is used to uniquely identify this request. It should be used as an argument to Gtk.Application.uninhibit() in order to remove the request. If the platform does not support inhibiting or the request failed for some reason, 0 is returned.

Return type:

int

Inform the session manager that certain types of actions should be inhibited. This is not guaranteed to work on all platforms and for all types of actions.

Applications should invoke this method when they begin an operation that should not be interrupted, such as creating a CD or DVD. The types of actions that may be blocked are specified by the flags parameter. When the application completes the operation it should call Gtk.Application.uninhibit() to remove the inhibitor. Note that an application can have multiple inhibitors, and all of them must be individually removed. Inhibitors are also cleared when the application exits.

Applications should not expect that they will always be able to block the action. In most cases, users will be given the option to force the action to take place.

Reasons should be short and to the point.

If window is given, the session manager may point the user to this window to find out more about why the action is inhibited.

New in version 3.4.

is_inhibited(flags)[source]¶

Parameters:: flags (Gtk.ApplicationInhibitFlags) – what types of actions should be queried
Returns:: True if any of the actions specified in flags are inhibited
Return type:: bool

Determines if any of the actions specified in flags are currently inhibited (possibly by another application).

Note that this information may not be available (for example when the application is running in a sandbox).

New in version 3.4.

list_action_descriptions()[source]¶

Returns:: a None-terminated array of strings, free with GLib.strfreev() when done
Return type:: [str]

Lists the detailed action names which have associated accelerators. See Gtk.Application.set_accels_for_action().

New in version 3.12.

prefers_app_menu()[source]¶

Returns:: True if you should set an app menu
Return type:: bool

Determines if the desktop environment in which the application is running would prefer an application menu be shown.

If this function returns True then the application should call Gtk.Application.set_app_menu() with the contents of an application menu, which will be shown by the desktop environment. If it returns False then you should consider using an alternate approach, such as a menubar.

The value returned by this function is purely advisory and you are free to ignore it. If you call Gtk.Application.set_app_menu() even if the desktop environment doesn’t support app menus, then a fallback will be provided.

Applications are similarly free not to set an app menu even if the desktop environment wants to show one. In that case, a fallback will also be created by the desktop environment (GNOME, for example, uses a menu with only a “Quit” item in it).

The value returned by this function never changes. Once it returns a particular value, it is guaranteed to always return the same value.

You may only call this function after the application has been registered and after the base startup handler has run. You’re most likely to want to use this from your own startup handler. It may also make sense to consult this function while constructing UI (in activate, open or an action activation handler) in order to determine if you should show a gear menu or not.

This function will return False on Mac OS and a default app menu will be created automatically with the “usual” contents of that menu typical to most Mac OS applications. If you call Gtk.Application.set_app_menu() anyway, then this menu will be replaced with your own.

New in version 3.14.

remove_accelerator(action_name, parameter)[source]¶

Parameters:

action_name (str) – the name of the action to activate
parameter (GLib.Variant or None) – parameter to pass when activating the action, or None if the action does not accept an activation parameter

Removes an accelerator that has been previously added with Gtk.Application.add_accelerator().

New in version 3.4.

Deprecated since version 3.14: Use Gtk.Application.set_accels_for_action() instead

remove_window(window)[source]¶

Parameters:: window (Gtk.Window) – a Gtk.Window

Remove a window from self.

If window belongs to self then this call is equivalent to setting the Gtk.Window :application property of window to None.

The application may stop running as a result of a call to this function.

New in version 3.0.

set_accels_for_action(detailed_action_name, accels)[source]¶

Parameters:

detailed_action_name (str) – a detailed action name, specifying an action and target to associate accelerators with
accels ([str]) – a list of accelerators in the format understood by Gtk.accelerator_parse()

Sets zero or more keyboard accelerators that will trigger the given action. The first item in accels will be the primary accelerator, which may be displayed in the UI.

To remove all accelerators for an action, use an empty, zero-terminated array for accels.

For the detailed_action_name, see Gio.Action.parse_detailed_name() and Gio.Action.print_detailed_name().

New in version 3.12.

set_app_menu(app_menu)[source]¶

Parameters:: app_menu (Gio.MenuModel or None) – a Gio.MenuModel, or None

Sets or unsets the application menu for self.

This can only be done in the primary instance of the application, after it has been registered. Gio.Application ::startup is a good place to call this.

The application menu is a single menu containing items that typically impact the application as a whole, rather than acting on a specific window or document. For example, you would expect to see “Preferences” or “Quit” in an application menu, but not “Save” or “Print”.

If supported, the application menu will be rendered by the desktop environment.

Use the base Gio.ActionMap interface to add actions, to respond to the user selecting these menu items.

New in version 3.4.

set_menubar(menubar)[source]¶

Parameters:: menubar (Gio.MenuModel or None) – a Gio.MenuModel, or None

Sets or unsets the menubar for windows of self.

This is a menubar in the traditional sense.

This can only be done in the primary instance of the application, after it has been registered. Gio.Application ::startup is a good place to call this.

Depending on the desktop environment, this may appear at the top of each window, or at the top of the screen. In some environments, if both the application menu and the menubar are set, the application menu will be presented as if it were the first item of the menubar. Other environments treat the two as completely separate — for example, the application menu may be rendered by the desktop shell while the menubar (if set) remains in each individual window.

Use the base Gio.ActionMap interface to add actions, to respond to the user selecting these menu items.

New in version 3.4.

uninhibit(cookie)[source]¶

Parameters:: cookie (int) – a cookie that was returned by Gtk.Application.inhibit()

Removes an inhibitor that has been established with Gtk.Application.inhibit(). Inhibitors are also cleared when the application exits.

New in version 3.4.

do_window_added(window) virtual¶

Parameters:: window (Gtk.Window) –

Signal emitted when a Gtk.Window is added to application through Gtk.Application.add_window().

do_window_removed(window) virtual¶

Parameters:: window (Gtk.Window) –

Signal emitted when a Gtk.Window is removed from application, either as a side-effect of being destroyed or explicitly through Gtk.Application.remove_window().

Signal Details¶

Gtk.Application.signals.query_end(application)¶

Signal Name:: query-end
Flags:: RUN_FIRST
Parameters:: application (Gtk.Application) – The object which received the signal

Emitted when the session manager is about to end the session, only if Gtk.Application ::register-session is True. Applications can connect to this signal and call Gtk.Application.inhibit() with Gtk.ApplicationInhibitFlags.LOGOUT to delay the end of the session until state has been saved.

New in version 3.24.8.

Gtk.Application.signals.window_added(application, window)¶

Signal Name:

window-added

Flags:

RUN_FIRST

Parameters:

application (Gtk.Application) – The object which received the signal
window (Gtk.Window) – the newly-added Gtk.Window

Emitted when a Gtk.Window is added to application through Gtk.Application.add_window().

New in version 3.2.

Gtk.Application.signals.window_removed(application, window)¶

Signal Name:

window-removed

Flags:

RUN_FIRST

Parameters:

application (Gtk.Application) – The object which received the signal
window (Gtk.Window) – the Gtk.Window that is being removed

Emitted when a Gtk.Window is removed from application, either as a side-effect of being destroyed or explicitly through Gtk.Application.remove_window().

New in version 3.2.

Property Details¶

Gtk.Application.props.active_window¶

Name:: active-window
Type:: Gtk.Window
Default Value:: None
Flags:: READABLE

The window which most recently had focus

Gtk.Application.props.app_menu¶

Name:: app-menu
Type:: Gio.MenuModel
Default Value:: None
Flags:: READABLE, WRITABLE

The Gio.MenuModel for the application menu

Gtk.Application.props.menubar¶

Name:: menubar
Type:: Gio.MenuModel
Default Value:: None
Flags:: READABLE, WRITABLE

The Gio.MenuModel for the menubar

Gtk.Application.props.register_session¶

Name:: register-session
Type:: bool
Default Value:: False
Flags:: READABLE, WRITABLE

Set this property to True to register with the session manager.

New in version 3.4.

Gtk.Application.props.screensaver_active¶

Name:: screensaver-active
Type:: bool
Default Value:: False
Flags:: READABLE

This property is True if GTK+ believes that the screensaver is currently active. GTK+ only tracks session state (including this) when Gtk.Application ::register-session is set to True.

Tracking the screensaver state is supported on Linux.

New in version 3.24.