[CalRobert]

They used to be discoverable with mnemonics (underlined letters) but those have been dead nearly thirty years…

[p-t]

these still exist on windows though? you just hold alt

[foobarbecue]

Only works for like 20% of the menus though. I remember alt shortcuts reliably being on every single menu in early Windows (95? ME? XP?)

[thewebguyd]

They died when people stopped using native toolkits and started making everything an electron app.

Economics be damned, if you're going to make a native app, use the OS provided toolkits.

[CalRobert]

Hah, I was thinking 3.1…

[foobarbecue]

Yeah I only used it a little bit so couldn't remember if it had the "hold alt to see shortcuts" thing

[MarsIronPI]

GTK (and QT I do believe) also support this on GNU/Linux.

[accrual]

I remember using TweakUI to enable "always show underline for shortcut key" because that genuinely felt like it should be a default for better usability.

[saint_yossarian]

I wouldn't say they're dead, just more hidden (e.g. GTK4 only shows them when you hold Alt). AFAIK most toolkits still support them, but app developers also have to actually define them.