Application

GtkApplication is a high-level API for writing applications.

It supports many aspects of writing a GTK application in a convenient fashion, without enforcing a one-size-fits-all model.

Currently, GtkApplication 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 GtkApplication works fine with plain class@Gtk.Windows, it is recommended to use it together with class@Gtk.ApplicationWindow.

Automatic resources

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

Note that automatic resource loading uses the resource base path that is set at construction time and will not work if the resource base path is changed at a later time.

It is also possible to provide the menubar manually using method@Gtk.Application.set_menubar.

GtkApplication 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 method@Gtk.IconTheme.add_resource_path for more information.

If there is a resource located at gtk/help-overlay.ui which defines a class@Gtk.ShortcutsWindow with ID help_overlay then GtkApplication associates an instance of this shortcuts window with each class@Gtk.ApplicationWindow and sets up the keyboard accelerator 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 is available in the GTK source code repository

GtkApplication optionally registers with a session manager of the users session (if you set the property@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 method@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

• Using GtkApplication

• getting_started.html#basics

Skipped during bindings generation

• method register-session: Property has no getter nor setter

• method screensaver-active: Property has no getter nor setter