I want my app to show his menu on launch only if the user didn't open a file. Now I can't seem to make it work. Hiding the menu makes the dock and the status bar invisible. I want them to still be there, but not with my own menu (e.g. if you open a file from finder, the finder menu is still visible, but my app opens a window that handles the file, and quits if the user cancels or on completion).
I probably didn't explain it well enough, but here's what I did to solve it :
Add this line to the plist of my app (this produces an app without dock icon or menu), the dock and the menu bar will still be there, but won't be changed by the app :
LSUIElement
(And set the checkbox to true).
This makes your app UI-only (it doesn't show his NSMenu nor does it add an icon to the dock, but just shows your GUI.
Related
I have a macOS app that has a main menu in the menu bar (not an NSStatusItem). I would like this main menu to be visible when one of the app's windows is focused. However, I do not want this window to have a dock icon.
When I set LSUIElement to true, I notice that the menu bar never appears.
I have a feeling LSUIElement breaks the menu bar completely. Is there an alternative approach to giving an app menu bar menus without having a dock icon?
I'm on 10.14.3. What's strange is others seem to have success creating a menu bar in the app. But no matter how many times I focus my app, the menu bar does not appear.
setActivationPolcy(...) seems to prevent the main menu from appearing entirely. LSUIElement does not show the menu either.
I'm creating an application where a menubar seems to be the most convenient way to have the user's desktop clean without a window. I've seen many tutorials online and on stack overflow but they seem to be only for Objective-C. I only use Swift. If you don't know what a menubar is, they're these icons:
I would like my app to have one of these instead of a constant full window. And if I can, how can I have a button on my menubar that brings up the window. Lastly, how can I have my icon not show, but I still have the finder advantages. (Like File, Edit..). For example,
I have already tried to put
Application is Agent (UIElement) to False
in my Info.plist but that also takes away my finder advantages.
Presumably what you're saying is that you want the text editing items (like Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All) from the Edit menu to work in your app's window.
Those menu items are part of another application, and only send messages in that application. They aren't available to your application, regardless of whether it's an “agent” (with no visible menu bar of its own). If one of your agent app's windows is the key window and the user clicks on a menu title (like File or Edit) that belongs to another app, then that app will activate and your app's window will “resign” the key window status.
You can make the usual shortcut keys (like ⌘X for Cut) work for your app, and it's easy. When one of your app's windows is the user's key window, your app receives keyboard events, and your NSApplication object (created for you automatically) will check its mainMenu for keyboard shortcuts even though the main menu is not displayed on the screen.
The OS X “Cocoa Application” project template sets up a main menu bar for you in MainMenu.xib (or in Main.storyboard), with all of the menu items wired up to the appropriate actions. So if you keep that main menu bar and the Edit menu and the menu items in the Edit menu and leave the shortcuts set on those items, then the keyboard shortcuts will work even if you set LSUIElement to YES in your Info.plist, when one of your app's windows is the key window. In other words, the shortcut keys will work by default, and you have to change things to make them stop working.
Text fields in your app's windows will also still get the default right-click menu with the usual items like Cut, Copy, and Paste, so you don't need to do anything else to make that work either.
Here's the contents of my test app's MainMenu.xib:
I've left the main menu bar alone. I've created a separate menu with two items, “Show Window” and “Quit”. I've set the shortcut for “Quit” to ⌘Q, but this shortcut has no effect. The StatusItem > Quit menu item (not visible in my screen shot) off the main menu bar has the same shortcut set, and that's the setting that matters. I've set the shortcut on this other Quit item because it's visible to the user, and the main menu bar won't be visible to the user.
I've wired this Quit item to the terminate: action of First Responder. (The StatusItem > Quit menu item is connected the same way by default.)
Here's my AppDelegate:
#NSApplicationMain
class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate {
#IBOutlet var window: NSWindow!
#IBOutlet var statusItemMenu: NSMenu!
var statusItem: NSStatusItem?
func applicationDidFinishLaunching(aNotification: NSNotification) {
self.statusItem = NSStatusBar.systemStatusBar().statusItemWithLength(NSVariableStatusItemLength)
let statusItem = self.statusItem!
let button = statusItem.button!
button.title = "Hello"
statusItem.menu = statusItemMenu
}
#IBAction func showWindow(sender: AnyObject) {
NSApp.activateIgnoringOtherApps(true)
window.makeKeyAndOrderFront(sender)
}
}
I've wired the “Show Window” menu item to the showWindow(_:) action, and I've connected the statusItemMenu outlet to that standalone menu in the XIB.
I also set “Application is Agent (UIElement)” to “YES” in Info.plist.
When I run this app, it creates the status item in the menu bar. I can choose “Show Window” from the item and my window comes to the front and becomes key. I can right-click the text field to get its context menu. I can use the standard shortcuts to cut/copy/paste/etc., to close the window, and even to quit the app.
If I have a NSWindow in Interface Builder and run my app, it opens.
How do I prevent this from happening? I'd like this window to only be opened when the user presses a button.
In the IB , you can find a check box named "Visible at Launch" in attributes tab.
You can uncheck that.So that window will not launch on app loading time
How can I display an NSPopover above my app's dock icon?
There are two ways to customise the dock menu, based on if your application is running or not. See the Apple documentation for customising it when its open here:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/customizing_docktile/docktasks_cocoa/docktasks_cocoa.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000986-CH3-SW1
To summarise, you basically provide a menu in the main application's XIB or storyboard which contains the extra menu options that you want to add to the dock menu.
To customise your Dock icon's menu when the application is not running, see the guide here:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/customizing_docktile/CreatingaDockTilePlug-in/CreatingaDockTilePlug-in.html
Basically, you need to create a plugin which you drop into your application's resource folder. This works very like the original method, but executes inside Finder's dock process.
I'm working on a Menu Bar app and I've added the LSUIElement so the icon won't appear in the dock when the app is in use (And also to remove the File, Edit, View etc at the left of the menu bar).
The problem is that I want the app to be launched by the Icon and by adding the LSUIElement the only way to luanch the app is thru xcode.
I've seen that in the Mac app Caffiene it launches by the icon but it doesn't appear in the dock that it's running etc which is excatly what I want/need.
So I was wondering if you guys know how to do this.
Thank you in advance!
If you want to have a dock icon but not show the app as running in the Dock, simply create two applications:
Status Menu Application
This is the actual application that sets up the menu and contains the application's logic. It has LSUIElement set.
Launcher Application
This application has a dock icon. It contains the status menu application in its bundle. Its sole job is to launch the status menu application and then quit itself.
There is a really simple way to do this without creating a separate launcher app. Build your application, which has a status item, as an app bundle. Then, add an entry to the application's Info.plist file
Key: NSUIElement
Value: Number, 1 or Boolean True
NSUIElement tells OSX if the app should display in the Dock or not.