How to disable F12 to debug application in Visual Studio 2012

Question

If I hit F12 while my application runs under Visual Studio in debug mode, the WM_KEYDOWN never reaches my event loop, but it immediately triggers a breakpoint. Is it possible to disable this feature, or reassign it to another, less conflicting hotkey (e.g. CTRL+F12)? I figure the must be a registry key, but I can't find it...

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

F12 is a reserved key for the debugger and its kernel-based https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms646309.aspx

But you can change the registry entry

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug] UserDebuggerHotKey=dword:00000000

to something else like 0x13 (Pause)

got this from http://conemu.github.io/en/GlobalHotKeys.html

Answer 2

You can disable it from Tools->options->Keyboard

Answer 3

It's easy to reassign a value like that to whatever you want.

1) Go to Tools/Options and click on Keyboard (under environment). Then find the command associated with F12. Which one depends on which mapping scheme you use, so I can't tell you the one to find.)

Then change it to whatever you want.

Too bad I can't add comments...

When I type in F12 (for Press shortcut keys), I get Edit.GoToDefinition. If I remove that assignment and then try again, it shows how it is used with Page Inspector.

If you enter F12 and nothing shows, then you can assume that VS is not using F12 and something else is.

You can just try assigning F12 to something and see if that is called instead - then at least you will have some idea of if VS is controlling it or something external to VS is.

Remember that you could also have some application that has remapped F12 so that when you press it, your application is getting a signal that some other key or key combination has been pressed (happened to me once.)