How to prevent menu (ContextMenuStrip) to steal focus from my TextBox control?

Question

I am trying to replicate an intellisense like feature where you have a textbox and a menu that's shown below it. I know intellisense doesn't use ContextMenuStrip, but my version has to have categories which are sub-menu items.

So as soon as the user clicks into my TextBox, I bring up the menu below once, but then even though I can see the caret in my TextBox it doesn't receive any key inputs. I have to click inside the TextBox again but that removes the menu from the screen.

Is there a way to prevent this? Or perhaps make the menu persistent on the screen without stealing focus?

Answer 1

ToolStrip control with items added to it seems to work since it's always on the form.