Custom NSView in NSMenuItem not receiving mouse events - cocoa

Question

I have an NSMenu popping out of an NSStatusItem using popUpStatusItemMenu. These NSMenuItems show a bunch of different links, and each one is connected with setAction: to the openLink: method of a target. This arrangement has been working fine for a long time. The user chooses a link from the menu and the openLink: method then deals with it.
Unfortunately, I recently decided to experiment with using NSMenuItem's setView: method to provide a nicer/slicker interface. Basically, I just stopped setting the title, created the NSMenuItem, and then used setView: to display a custom view. This works perfectly, the menu items look great and my custom view is displayed.
However, when the user chooses a menu item and releases the mouse, the action no longer works (i.e., openLink: isn't called). If I just simply comment out the setView: call, then the actions work again (of course, the menu items are blank, but the action is executed properly). My first question, then, is why setting a view breaks the NSMenuItem's action.
No problem, I thought, I'll fix it by detecting the mouseUp event in my custom view and calling my action method from there. I added this method to my custom view:
- (void)mouseUp:(NSEvent *)theEvent {
NSLog(#"in mouseUp");
}
No dice! This method is never called.
I can set tracking rects and receive mouseEntered: events, though. I put a few tests in my mouseEntered routine, as follows:
if ([[self window] ignoresMouseEvents]) { NSLog(#"ignoring mouse events"); }
else { NSLog(#"not ignoring mouse events"); }
if ([[self window] canBecomeKeyWindow]) { dNSLog((#"canBecomeKeyWindow")); }
else { NSLog(#"not canBecomeKeyWindow"); }
if ([[self window] isKeyWindow]) { dNSLog((#"isKeyWindow")); }
else { NSLog(#"not isKeyWindow"); }
And got the following responses:
not ignoring mouse events
canBecomeKeyWindow
not isKeyWindow
Is this the problem? "not isKeyWindow"? Presumably this isn't good because Apple's docs say "If the user clicks a view that isn’t in the key window, by default the window is brought forward and made key, but the mouse event is not dispatched." But there must be a way do detect these events. HOW?
Adding:
[[self window] makeKeyWindow];
has no effect, despite the fact that canBecomeKeyWindow is YES.

Answer 1

Add this method to your custom NSView and it will work fine with mouse events
- (void)mouseUp:(NSEvent*) event {
NSMenuItem* mitem = [self enclosingMenuItem];
NSMenu* m = [mitem menu];
[m cancelTracking];
[m performActionForItemAtIndex: [m indexOfItem: mitem]];
}
But i'm having problems with keyhandling, if you solved this problem maybe you can go to my question and help me a little bit.

Answer 2

Add this to your custom view and you should be fine:
- (BOOL)acceptsFirstMouse:(NSEvent *)theEvent
{
return YES;
}

Answer 3

I added this method to my custom view, and now everything works beautifully:
- (void)viewDidMoveToWindow {
[[self window] becomeKeyWindow];
}
Hope this helps!

Answer 4

I've updated this version for SwiftUI Swift 5.3:
final class HostingView<Content: View>: NSHostingView<Content> {
override func viewDidMoveToWindow() {
window?.becomeKey()
}
}
And then use like so:
let item = NSMenuItem()
let contentView = ContentView()
item.view = HostingView(rootView: contentView)
let menu = NSMenu()
menu.items = [item]

Answer 5

So far, the only way to achieve the goal, is to register a tracking area manually in updateTrackingAreas - that is thankfully called, like this:
override func updateTrackingAreas() {
let trackingArea = NSTrackingArea(rect: bounds, options: [.enabledDuringMouseDrag, .mouseEnteredAndExited, .activeInActiveApp], owner: self, userInfo: nil)
addTrackingArea(trackingArea)
}

Answer 6

Recently I needed to show a Custom view for a NSStatusItem, show a regular NSMenu when clicking on it and supporting drag and drop operations on the Status icon.
I solved my problem using, mainly, three different sources that can be found in this question.
Hope it helps other people.

Answer 7

See the sample code from Apple named CustomMenus
In there you'll find a good example in the ImagePickerMenuItemView class.
It's not simple or trivial to make a view in a menu act like a normal NSMenuItem.
There are some real decisions and coding to do.