The AccelLabel widget is a subclass of Label that also displays an accelerator key on the right of the label text, e.

g. “Ctrl+S”. It is commonly used in menus to show the keyboard short-cuts for commands.

The accelerator key to display is typically not set explicitly (although it can be, with set_accel). Instead, the AccelLabel displays the accelerators which have been added to a particular widget. This widget is set by calling set_accel_widget.

For example, a MenuItem widget may have an accelerator added to emit the “activate” signal when the “Ctrl+S” key combination is pressed. A AccelLabel is created and added to the MenuItem, and set_accel_widget is called with the MenuItem as the second argument. The AccelLabel will now display “Ctrl+S” after its label.

Note that creating a MenuItem with MenuItem.with_label (or one of the similar functions for CheckMenuItem and RadioMenuItem) automatically adds a AccelLabel to the MenuItem and calls set_accel_widget to set it up for you.

A AccelLabel will only display accelerators which have gtk_accel_visible set (see AccelFlags). A AccelLabel can display multiple accelerators and even signal names, though it is almost always used to display just one accelerator key.

Creating a simple menu item with an accelerator key.

  GtkWidget *window = gtk_window_new (GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);
  GtkWidget *menu = gtk_menu_new ();
  GtkWidget *save_item;
  GtkAccelGroup *accel_group;

  // Create a GtkAccelGroup and add it to the window.
  accel_group = gtk_accel_group_new ();
  gtk_window_add_accel_group (GTK_WINDOW (window), accel_group);

  // Create the menu item using the convenience function.
  save_item = gtk_menu_item_new_with_label ("Save");
  gtk_widget_show (save_item);
  gtk_container_add (GTK_CONTAINER (menu), save_item);

  // Now add the accelerator to the GtkMenuItem. Note that since we
  // called gtk_menu_item_new_with_label() to create the GtkMenuItem
  // the GtkAccelLabel is automatically set up to display the
  // GtkMenuItem accelerators. We just need to make sure we use
  // GTK_ACCEL_VISIBLE here.
  gtk_widget_add_accelerator (save_item, "activate", accel_group,
                              GDK_KEY_s, GDK_CONTROL_MASK, GTK_ACCEL_VISIBLE);

CSS nodes

label
╰── accelerator

Label, GtkAccelLabel has a main CSS node with the name label. It adds a subnode with name accelerator.