Keyboard Accelerators (Shortcuts) in C# WPF (A minimal example)

This is a simple example of how to implement a keyboard shortcut in C# WPF. I couldn’t get a lot of code samples available out there to work so this is just a minimal example of one menu command.

Link with repo with example source code

Steps

There are three steps to create a keyboard shortcut. The first is to create a RoutedUICommand (not sure what it does but some explanation here). The next is to create a CommandBinding that defines what to run when the command is called. The final step is to create a KeyBinding where we define the keyboard shortcut.

Step 1

Put the RoutedUICommand in the window resources.

    <Window.Resources>
        <RoutedUICommand x:Key="DoSomethingCommand" Text="Do Something" />
    </Window.Resources>

Step 2

Put the CommandBinding after the Window.Resource section. RunTest is a function inside my MainWindow class.

Be sure to put the Window.CommandBindings after Window.Resources section in the XAML file. The order matters!

    <Window.CommandBindings>
        <CommandBinding Command="{StaticResource DoSomethingCommand}" Executed="RunTest" />
    </Window.CommandBindings>

Step 3

This is where we specify the keyboard shortcut for the command.

    <Window.InputBindings>
        <KeyBinding Command="{StaticResource DoSomethingCommand}" Key="L" Modifiers="Ctrl" />
    </Window.InputBindings>

At this point, using Ctrl+L anywhere in the app will cause the RunTest to be executed.

I will just show how to use it in a menu item.

<MenuItem Header="_Test" Command="{StaticResource DoSomethingCommand}" InputGestureText="Ctrl+L"/>

Notice we are using the command instead of click. Click would also work. To get the menu command on the right hand side, we use the InputGestureText.

Conclusion

This is the smallest example with XAML only code to get a keyboard shortcut into a XAML C# program.

Steps

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Using the Keyboard Shortcut in a Menu Item

Conclusion