Some Apple apps (such as Xcode and iTunes) add an item to the Control Strip on the Touch Bar that when selected shows the app's Touch Bar (e.g. Xcode's debugger and iTunes' scrubber) without bringing the app to the foreground.
Is it possible for a third party app to do something similar?
Yes. Spotify and TouchSwitcher do the same. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any open source program that you could look into.
Related
I know that users can set specific apps to run with the function keys active on the touch bar by default in their system keyboard prefs as per https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207240. But is there anyway for a developer to request this from within their app? I browsed the Apple developer docs on this subject but did not see any way to do this, if it's there it's well hidden - seems like Apple is more into encouraging devs to forget about the existence of the f-keys and embrace the dynamic functionality of the touch bar.
Working on porting a Windows game to Mac using SDL2, and I noticed on the Mac that the menu bar for the game includes a View menu with an item Toggle Full Screen. I'm assuming SDL put it there automatically, as I didn't request it anywhere in my code. However, since the game can run in a window or full screen (and the window is resizable), I figure I should make this menu item actually work somehow.
I know practically nothing about Mac OSX coding (I just followed a tutorial to get my SDL app to build on the Mac side in XCode), and I can't find anything in the SDL documentation about how to respond to, activate, or remove this menu item (or other ones that are greyed out, like the Minimize option in the Window menu). Best I could find online is a reference to it being added in a commit to the SDL code base, but nothing in the commit message about how one is supposed to hook it up to their application code.
So, how do I activate and respond to this menu item (and any other menu items that only show up in OSX builds for that matter, like Minimize and About)? And is it something I can hook up in a cross-platform way via SDL itself, or did SDL add something that I have to deal with using platform-specific OSX code?
I'm working on a cross-platform command-line application (in C++ on
Win/Linux and ObjC++ on OSX) which sometimes creates an OpenGL
context. The OpenGL context and window creation code is obviously
different for the different platforms, but on OSX it's done through
NSOpenGLView and NSWindow. There's no nib, and it's not built with
Xcode (it uses a cross-platform build script).
On OSX, the window is created and works fine, but the OpenGL window
doesn't show up in the Application Switcher (Cmd-Tab). This means
that it's tricky to find the window if you 'lose it' behind other
windows, and can often only be found by going to Mission
Control/Expose.
My question is: is there a programmatic way (i.e. a message to send to
the NSWindow object or NSApplication) to ensure that a (unix-style)
command line application will show up in the Cmd-Tab list once the
window is created?
You need to transform the process from an accessory to a regular app. Call [NSApp setActivationPolicy:NSApplicationActivationPolicyRegular].
Once you do that, though, the app will also have a menu bar when it's active. This is good because it's what users expect. However, you probably need to add appropriate items to the menus in that menu bar to get a decent user experience.
Your app will appear in the Dock as well as the Command-Tab application switcher. By default, an unbundled executable will get an icon that looks like a CRT display showing the word "exec". You can use [NSApp setApplicationIconImage:someImage] to set a better icon, although the Dock will revert to showing the generic executable icon briefly as the process exits.
I'd like to show another app's windows under my app's taskbar button. It's a background app that reports another process's windows as my app's own. Is there any universal way to do this, e.g. each "new" window, alert glow, progressmeter, and other taskbar features, show under my own app's button?
For example, Winfox runs under its own process and steals Firefox's windows. It also adds features, but that's irrelevant -- I just want to support another app's existing taskbar features under my own app's button -- multiple windows, progressmeter, alert flashing, error flashing, mini-icons, etc. Is there a near-universal way to steal an app, or is it largely app-specific? Thanks!
You should be able to use SetParent() to take ownership of a window, but I'm not sure how much this will help you in your attempt to add taskbar features to the legacy app.
I'm wondering how to dock / snap a window to the side of the screen in Windows, preferably with straight Win32 API. The effect I'm looking for is like the task bar -- a window that has a reserved space on screen, so that maximizing another window makes that window take up the rest of the screen, but leaves my window in place and visible.
I know various IM clients do this, but haven't been able to find any resources on how to do it. Not sure what the appropriate name for it is either.
Edit: "Application Desktop Toolbar" is the search term to use to find info on this.
IIUYC you're looking for an app bar (MS-officially "Application Desktop Toolbar"). You can indeed create these with the Windows API.
"App Bar" - you turn a window into an App Bar by sending the ABM_NEW message. Examples on MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc144177(VS.85).aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/134206