Alt Key Doesn't Open Menu

lnicaodh

Hi,

I’ve got the same issue (no menu when hitting alt).

Inspired by @karsten13 's post I tested out changing
“electronOptionsDefaults.frame = false;” to true in electron.js and this gave me the window toolbar just fine, but it was always on. Trying a few other things still hasnt given me the ‘sometimes on’ functionality.

I also don’t know if there is another electronOptions I should be changing instead of the defaults inside of electron.js

Short of writing a new function to set frame to true on a button press (which I’m not even sure would work, because the settings are passed in at window creation), I’m not sure where to go next.

So I know roughly what to investigate, but I’m still a bit lost. If anyone else has solved this issue or has any suggestions I’d be very grateful!

sdetweil

@lnicaodh you can look thru the electron config option on the electron site. lots of them

lnicaodh

As a partial fix for this:

Add the following to your config.js

electronOptions:
    {
		frame: true,
		autoHideMenuBar: true
    }

However, this has the issue of still showing the outer frame of the window, which obviously isn’t ideal.

I need to move on from troubleshooting this particular issue so this will have to do for now. Hopefully someone in future can solve it for real.

ankonaskiff17

@lnicaodh If it is any consolation I have 3 Pi4b’s and 1 Pi3B and they all exhibit the same behavior.
Ive done automated installs, manual installs 64 bit, 32 bit, and none of them function by hitting ALT key.
F11 will reduce size on MM screen so you can get at file manager and Shift+CTL+I will launch developer tools.

I suspect as prices continue to drop on Pi’s this is going to show up more and more.

lnicaodh

@ankonaskiff17 I’m brand new to this so still testing on PC, but will be moving to RPi soon, thanks for letting me know what to expect!

It bothered me that alt+f4 left a bunch of electron processes open which prevents a new instance launching, and they are a bit stubborn to kill in the task manager.

I haven’t tested this but I’m thinking a solution might be to just make the app window slightly taller than the screen so that the visible frame is just beyond the display border… feels like a sad workaround but i’m hoping it’ll at least hide the unsightly edge!

Hopefully the issue gets resolved soon enough.

Fifteen15Studios

@ankonaskiff17 If you read the thread, this has nothing to do with the hardware. It’s a change that was made to the software. The price of the pi has nothing to do with this thread.

ankonaskiff17

@Fifteen15Studios When the price of Pi’s come down, more people will start buying Pi’s.
As the volume of 4B sales increase, the subset of purchasers installing MM software onto these new Pi’s is going to increase and probably significantly.
I never said it was hardware based.
I said the decreasing price of Pi’s will show up in the number of complaints.
I was the one who originated the thread.

When Pi 4B’s are selling for ridiculously high prices that means less people are going to buy them. How many $200.00 Pi 4B’s did you or members of this forum buy?
You have this demographic of people that buy 4B’s, Pi’s are used for a multitude of different projects. A subset of 4B purchasers build Magic Mirrors.
When the price of Pi’s get stupid high, less people are going to buy 4B’s across the board. Consequently the subset of 4B purchasers who paid $200.00 for a 4B to build MM’s probably tailed off to near zero.
As Pi 4B price decreases, sales will increase across the board. That subset of Pi purchasers that are MM builders will start increasing.
As MM builds increase, since the problem hasn’t been solved as far as I know, more people will start complaining “ALT doesn’t work”.

In that economic respect the price of Pi’s will increase the number of people complaining.
I stand by my economic statement.

sdetweil

@ankonaskiff17 we should also remove the sentence from the doc. or put in the correct keystroke combo.

ankonaskiff17

@sdetweil That’s up to you all. You can’t do away with the sentence. Sentence should say ALT+Space Bar and you need to validate install per instructions to confirm. Do away with the sentence then everyone trying to build one on their own is stuck the first time they want to flip back and forth between different views.
All I can say regarding ALT is that I have built several MM’s, used ALT per the doc and it worked up until v 2.23.0.

Where does that block of Electron.js code exist. It absolutely exists somewhere.
You and some of the other folks that maintain Magic Mirror get down in the weeds with this stuff and I’m like I’m missing something because it seems like this question should be as answerable as the thousand other questions that float across the top of the forum but it isn’t.

I know maintaining documentation is one of the most miserable tasks out there, or at least it is in my opinion.
At least it was for me when I had to do it. I’d get an assignment to do some documentation and I would think “What did I do to make you mad at me.”

But MM is designed for average Joe who decides they want to take a crack at building one to be able to do it with little to no help so the docs need to be correct

I have installed PiOS so many times in last few weeks, NEVER using VNC
I can not make ALT+Spacebar work. I’m doing it right now.

sdetweil

@ankonaskiff17 electron is hundreds of thousands of line of code.

https://github.com/electron/electron

our code that uses Electron is in electron.js