Running Win10 (home) and IDE 2.2.1 when I accidentally hit "a key" (?) on the keyboard, probably with my left hand. I immediately lost the top-level menus (i.e., File, Edit, Sketch, Tools, Help). What did I do and how can I restore those menus?
Perhaps this quote from a random windows forum might help.
I press the Alt key and hold it down for around one second.
Upon release, the invisible menu bar appears.
This trick works for most every kind of window. Not just IE.
Whatever the window, you never know what you might find hidden in there until you press the Alt key and hold it down for a second.
Thanks, V205! I don't know what triggered it, but I'll try the Alt key if it happens again.
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Are you sure you have lost just the menu bar and we aren't talking about the F11 behaviour (toggles full screen mode, removing title and menu bars)?
Anyway, you should still be able to access all of the menu options by clicking the "Application menu" icon, the "hamburger button" (three lines) at the top of the sidebar:
You can here even access application Preferences and edit them, including the available keyboard shortcuts (just in case you're curious):
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@docdoc: I did not know the purpose of F11. However, I tried it and that's the screen that I saw. Another press and it was back to normal. I use F12 a lot and perhaps I hit F11 by mistake. That being said, I do not see the hamburger button with or without the top-level menus visible. How did you get it to appear? I've never seen it before.
In any event, thanks for pointing out the use of the F11 button!
That's what I supposed happened... 
By the way, F11 behaviour comes from browsers: try pressing it now and see how the browser looks! It gives you the maximum space for the page, removing any browser menu and toolbars...
Sorry, I don't know, I always had that sidebar (called the "Activity bar": you see such vertical bar, yes?) since I started using IDE 2.1 so at the moment I don't have any idea why I have the "hamburger" button on the top of activity bar and you don't .
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You're right! I tried it on Firefox, Opera, and Edge and it works on all of them. Good to know...
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Anyway, I find this behaviour an annoying bug and should be corrected.
PC with IDE 2.2.1, Windows 11, this is the procedure to reproduce the issue:
- if I start the program it won't show the topmost menu:
- If I press the "hamburger" button, a "popup" menu appears showing the "Application Menu":
- Inside "Preferences" there's no (I can't see any) option to show/hide topmost menu:
- Pressing the F11 key the program goes full screen (that's good) but when pressing it again, the topmost menu "magically" comes out!
- If I close the IDE and launch it again, no top menu anymore!
The only way to get it back is to press F11 twice.
It seems once you press F11 the IDE hides the top menu (I think it's ok to save screen space) but it won't correctly reset something, so the menu won't show back anymore!
Hi @docdoc. Try this:
- Press the Ctrl+Shift+P keyboard shortcut (Command+Shift+P for macOS users) to open the "Command Palette".
A menu will appear on the editor toolbar:
- Select the "Preferences: Open Settings (UI)" command from the menu.
ⓘ You can scroll down through the list of commands to find it or type the name in the field.
A "Preferences" tab will open in the Arduino IDE main panel. - Type
window.menuBarVisibilityin the "Search Settings" field of the "Preferences" tab. - Select "classic" from the menu under the "Window: Menu Bar Visibility" setting.
- Close the Preferences tab by clicking its X icon.
Hopefully that will restore the IDE back to the normal layout.
Thanks, I can gain my topbar menu back, but IMHO there's still something to investigate about that.
My "Menu Bar Visibility" was in fact set to "compact" (meaning it shows just the "hamburger" button instead) and the "Title Bar Style" was "native". But, based on the tooltip of "Menu Bar Visibility" setting:
the "compact" will/should be ignored when Title Bar Style is "native", and IMHO it should mean Menu Bar behaviour is the default ("classic") one. But first of all it doensn't: with "Menu Bar Visibility"="compact" and "Title Bar Style"="native" the Menu Bar is hidden (while the "hamburger" button is correctly shown). But then, if I press F11 twice the Menu Bar shows back (if the setting should always hide Menu Bar it shouldn't show up, or if the setting brings to "classic" it should show up without F11).
Do I miss something?
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