The problem: In terminal Emacs, clicking on an item in the menu bar will open "tmm-menubar". Expected behavior: "menu-bar-open" should be run instead (i.e. a drop-down menu should appear instead of tmm-menubar). For example, if I left-click on the "Edit" menu item in the menu bar, I expect the "Edit" drop-down to appear. Currently however, a left-click on a menu item will open tmm-menubar in a *Completions* window. This is surprising behavior. By default, in terminal Emacs, " " is bound to "tmm-menubar-mouse". There doesn't seem to be an easy way to change this to the drop-down menu instead. There exist a question about this issue on Emacs Stack Exchange site: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/50478/replace-clicking-a-menu-bar-option-from-m-to-f10-behavior The proposed "solution" there is similar to this: (define-key global-map [menu-bar mouse-1]             (lambda (event)               (interactive "e")               ;; Adapted from the implementation of "menu-bar-open" in Emacs 25.2.2.               (let* ((x (car (posn-x-y (event-start event))))                      (menu (menu-bar-menu-at-x-y x 0)))                 (popup-menu (or (lookup-key-ignore-too-long global-map (vector 'menu-bar menu))                                 (lookup-key-ignore-too-long (current-local-map) (vector 'menu-bar menu))                                 (cdar (minor-mode-key-binding (vector 'menu-bar menu)))                                 (mouse-menu-bar-map))                             (posn-at-x-y x 0 nil t)                             nil                             t)))) However, there are serious flaws with this "solution": * Clicking on a menu bar item (e.g. "Help"), followed immediately by clicking outside the menus and drop-downs (e.g. clicking in the window) will not cancel the selected action. Instead, the highlighted action will actually run. * Clicking on a particular menu bar item (e.g. "Help") and immediately clicking on it again will not close the drop-down menu. (Emacs version: 25.2.2, Terminal: GNOME Terminal 3.28.2, OS: Ubuntu 18.04)