Question

I can’t get single key shortcuts to work properly in PyQt on Mac. For example, if I change the QKeySequence below to Qt.Key_Tab it works fine, but Qt.Key_Control doesn’t work. Am I doing something wrong?

I’ve tried Qt.CTRL and "Ctrl" too, but they don’t work either.

shortcut = QShortcut(QKeySequence(Qt.Key_Control), self, self.show_dialog)
shortcut.setContext(Qt.ApplicationShortcut)

Answer 1

I’m unable to test this myself, but the modifiers map to different keys on a Mac: see the note at the end of the details section for QKeySequence.

It looks like you need to use Qt.Key_Meta.

Use this to see exactly which keys are being pressed:

from PyQt4 import QtGui

class Window(QtGui.QWidget):
    def __init__(self):
        QtGui.QWidget.__init__(self)
        self.resize(200, 200)

    def keyPressEvent(self, event):
        print 'key: %s -' % hex(event.key()),
        print 'modifiers:', hex(int(event.modifiers()))

if __name__ == '__main__':

    import sys
    app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
    win = Window()
    win.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

EDIT

NB: Qt does not allow modifier keys (in any combination) to be set as shortcuts.