I've got an NSStatusItem with a menu. My problem is that when you click on for example the wifi icon, the menu appears. When I move to the right (on my mac the battery status item is there) the menu for the battery automatically appears. That's what I mean with "on hover". This behaviour is implemented in pretty much all status items and/or menu's. But my NSStatusItem doesn't implement this behaviour. I don't see an option in IB to "assign" this behaviour, so I started searching the web and all I can come up with is this:
Status Item menus don't open on hover
The "answer" here is everything but satisfying. So my question is: is this true? Aren't there any ways to create this behaviour without using private API's?
Thanks a lot in advance,
Frans
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I've created an interface nib/xib file. The app is basically working, which is cool. The standard toolbar buttons look bad, they're glossy and raised, while most apps in Lion have the flat, inner bevel look. So I created some image toolbar buttons and put them in the toolbar and they look great, but they're all disabled by default.
Is there a way to give these the correct state in InterfaceBuilder or do I have to use code to give them the proper state.
Cocoa and Objective C are very unfamiliar so it would be helpful to me if I just knew what to search for. Most of my searching brings me results for creating custom buttons for iOS.
I figured this out, here's what you do:
In the nib/xib file, double click your menu bar to show the "allowed toolbar items" sheet. From here, choose your button that you've created. In my case I'll select a back button that I want to connect to a webview control. Ctrl click + drag from the button to what you want to connect it to and then make the appropriate connection. In my case I choose goBack from the WebView.
Once it has a connection it now becomes active.
XCode works in mysterious ways (at least to me).
I simply want to create a Preference pane in my app. When I run my app, the stock menu bar comes up (Apple, MyApp, File, Edit...) and the "Preferences" menu item is grayed out. It makes sense since I haven't started playing with it.
How on earth do I add/remove/activate/inactivate menu items? I'm not talking about adding anything new, simply using what should be there.
Thanks in advance.
NSMenu has "Auto Enable Items" enabled by default. That means if the menu item does not have it's action message hooked up, it will appear grayed out. So in your case, you would simply set the Preferences menu item's "Sent Action" to whatever action shows your preferences window. This can be hooked to some sort of showPreferencesWindow: method of your AppDelegate, or directly to the showWindow: method of a window controller.
To dynamically enable/disable menu items the best way is to implement the NSUserInterfaceItemValidation protocol which is excellently documented here
Edit: Your app's menu bar items live in the MainMenu.xib file. The menu bar appears as a "Main Menu" object on the left hand side (if you're using Xcode 4) Simply click on the items to modify them, and you can Ctrl+drag connections to and from them like any UI object.
I'm curious if there's a trick to detecting a click on the Menu Bar as a whole. I know I can detect a click on an NSStatusItem or NSMenu, but I am looking for events pertaining to the empty space of the Menu Bar.
Looking through the documentation, it does not seem possible. However, I wanted to know if anyone had a workaround for this functionality?
You can install a local event monitor using NSEvent addLocalMonitorForEventsMatchingMask:handler:
See the documentation located here.
I've been playing around with a statusbar menu app and what I'd like it to do is to update the content of the menu when it is clicked. I've been able to get everything working on the awakefromnib function and it works as expected. Now i just want to update the menu everytime I click on the status bar. This surely can be done, since it's done in the dropbox statusbar menu and many of the native app statusbar menus. I'm not able to associate a action directly with the click of the menu and I don't want to leave a loop running in the background cause I don't really see a need for it. Any ideas? An alternative would be to have an action associated to a menu item which does not cause the menu to get hidden again. Any help would be welcome.
Just set a delegate for your menu, and implement the -(void)menuWillOpen:(NSMenu *)menu method.
I wrote a little app that lives in the NSStatusBar. I want to have a global shortcut that when hit, the menu bar's content is displayed, exactly like the behavior of spotlight.
I have added a global key shortcut to my application, but I am unable to get the meun bar to display. How can I do this? I tried with "popUpContextMenu" , but that method displays the menu in the bottom left hand corner, I want the menu to open up right under the NSStatusBar menu icon.
You can do it, apple provides a method for it popUpStatusItemMenu:
I don't think there is a supported way to do this without perhaps using the Accessibility framework to simulate a click on your status item. Regardless, it's probably not a good idea to abuse a menu in this way.
The Spotlight menu bar item does not use an NSMenu, it uses a custom window/view. You might consider going this route if you have some sort of custom view to display.