Uicontextmenu doesn't work properly when using menu editor in GUI

I have a GUI with multiple axes, and I want a context menu in one of the axes. I used menu editor to get it to work, but for some reason I can only see the right click options if I don't have an image on the axis. The moment I use imshow on that axis for example, I can no longer see the context menu. I've tried looking around for a solution, but most people seem to be hard coding uicontextmenu, and I want to know how to make it work properly through the menu editor. Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

In the case where the axes appears to be in the default position as if it is the only axes in the figure, then imshow() deletes the axes and creates a new one. This would, of course, delete anything like context menus that were configured for the axes.

The solution is not to use imshow() for anything other than rough interactive work.

[Matt Markowitz]

Thank you, I wasn't aware that imshow behaved that way. However, I tried using both image and imagesc right now, and they appear to have the same problem. How can I display an image and get around this problem?

[Walter Roberson]

When you say that you are using the menu editor, is that https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_guis/creating-menus-in-a-guide-gui.html ?

[Matt Markowitz]

Yes.

[Walter Roberson]

Can you attach your .fig and associated code?

[Matt Markowitz]

Here's a generic implementation.

[Adam]

imagesc works if you turn the HitTest property of the image off, e.g.

hIm = imagesc( ... )
set( hIm, 'HitTest', 'off' )

This allows the axes, not the image, to pick up mouse events.

However, imshow turns the 'Visible' property of the axes to 'off' which means that even if you include the above line to turn the HitTest of the image off the axes still will not pick up the mouse event because it is invisible. You can switch the axes back on again:

set( handles.axes1, 'Visible', 'on' )

and, together with the image hit test code this should work, though you would need to unshow the axes ticks and labels yourself doing this (this is something I have always done manually so I never realised imshow achieves it by making the axes invisible).

Alternatively, depending on what the general usage of your code is, you could attach the context menu to the image instead of the axes.

[Matt Markowitz]

Thank you Adam! This was exactly what I needed.