Construct and manage a graphical, event-driven user interface for your macOS app using AppKit.

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Delete button in default NSSavePanel for new document
I just noticed that when closing a new document with edits in MacOS Sonoma that it skips the Save/Don't Save/Cancel panel and goes directly to default NSSavePanel with Delete/Cancel/Save buttons. The problem is that when I click "Delete" nothing happens. It should have simple solution, but I could not find anything. How does one respond to the "Delete" button? My undocumented (as far as I can tell) hack was to implement document:didSave:contextinfo selector for runModalSavePanelForSaveOperation. It appears that in this method for a new document: Delete button has didSave=YES (even though it did not save) and the document fileURL nil Cancel button has didSave=NO and document fileURL nil Save button has didSave=YES and document filieURL to saved file I can handle Delete button this way, but since it is not a documented method, it make me uncomfortable. For example what happens is user clicks "Save", but the save has an error? As an aside, since Apple is now working with ChatGPT, I thought it might provide some help. I asked it how I can respond to "Delete" button in MacOS Sonoma and it said to implement deleteDocument: in your NSDocument subclass. I pointed out to ChatGPT that deleteDocument: does not exist. It said "you are correct" and you should instead check the returned result from runModalSavePanelForSaveOperation and look for "stop" action. I pointed out to ChatGPT that runModalSavePanelForSaveOperation is void and does not return a result, it said again, "you are correct." It gave a third option which basically said to override runModalSavePanelForSaveOperation and build your own save panel from scratch. I didn't know if I should trust this answer. I reverted to my hack and wrote this post. Also ChatGPT never apologized for wasting my time with the wrong answers.
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678
Jun ’24
preferred file name extension for exported file type
Our app exports a number of file types in info.plist. For each of these file types, we export various possible file name extensions. For example, for one of our file types, we specify the possible extensions ".data", ".fitdat", and ".profitdata". In the settings of our app, we allow the user to select their preferred extension to be used, i.e. the extension to be used when, e.g., saving a document with "Save As..." panel without explicitly specifying the extension. For this, we override NSDocument's fileNameExtensionForType:saveOperation to return the presently preferred extension. This has stopped working, probably starting from macOS 14. If the user does not specify the extension in the NSSavePanel, it's always the first extension (".data") that gets added to the file name. I guess it's a consequence of the introduction of UTType, which has its own preferredFilenameExtension, which in turn probably just grabs the first extension we specify in our info.plist Any advice how to resolve this? Is there any way to override NSSavePanel's selection of extension if the user does not specify one? Thanks for any advice in advance Kurt
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508
Apr ’24
applicationShouldOpenUntitledFile isn't working anymore
I saw this thread https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/69888 and I need to not open a new default window just because the app is brought to the front without having any windows open. Unfortunately, that isn't working any more under Sonoma 14.5. Here's my code: // Let's not open default window just because we're being brought to the front. -(BOOL)applicationShouldHandleReopen { return NO; } -(BOOL)applicationShouldOpenUntitledFile { return NO; } I have breakpoints set on both return statements, but they are never hit.
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476
Jun ’24
CAMetalLayer renders HDR images with a color shift
I can't get CoreImage to render an HDR image file with correct colors to a CAMetalLayer on macOS 14. I'm comparing the result with NSImageView and the SupportingHDRImagesInYourApp 'HDRDemo23' sample code, which use CVPixelBuffer. With CAMetalLayer, the images are displayed as HDR (definitely more highlights), but they're darker with some kind saturation increase & color shift. Files I've tested include the sample ISO HDR files in the SupportingHDRImagesInYourApp sample code. Methods I've tried to render to CAMetalLayer include: Modifying the GeneratingAnAnimationWithACoreImageRenderDestination sample code's ContentView so it uses HDRDemo23/example-ISO-HDR-images/image_01.heic, loaded using CIImage(contentsOf:) Creating a test AppKit app that uses MTKView and CIRenderDestination the same way. I have NSImageView and the MTKView in the same window for comparison. Using CIRAWFilter > CIRenderDestination > IOSurface > MTKView/CAMetalLayer All these methods produce the image with the exact same appearance; a dark HDR image with some saturation/color shift. The only clue I've found is that when using the Metal Debugger on the test AppKit app, the CAMetalLayer's 'Present' shows the 'input' thumbnail is HDR without the color shift, but the 'output' thumbnail looks like what I actually see. I tried changing the color profile on the layer to various things but nothing looked more correct. I've tried this on two Macs, an M1 Mac Studio with an LG display, and a MacBook Air M2. The MacBook Air shows the same color shift, but since it has less dynamic range overall there isn't as much difference between NSImageView and MTKView.
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1.2k
Feb ’24
How activate window correctly using activationPolicy
I have the following code: + (BOOL)activateWindow:(NSWindow*)window { if (NSApp.activationPolicy != NSApplicationActivationPolicyRegular) [NSApp setActivationPolicy:NSApplicationActivationPolicyRegular]; if (window) { [NSApp activate]; //if (window.isMiniaturized) [window deminiaturize:nil]; [window makeKeyAndOrderFront:nil]; } return YES; } + (BOOL)hideWindowFromDock:(NSWindow*)window { if (NSApp.activationPolicy != NSApplicationActivationPolicyProhibited) [NSApp setActivationPolicy:NSApplicationActivationPolicyProhibited]; window.isVisible = NO; return YES; } I hide app main window by setting NSApplicationActivationPolicyProhibited if it is minimized or being closed. The code worked most of the time. But since upgrading to Sonoma, sometimes it won't correctly activate main window. The window icon reappears in the dock, but the window won't show up. I have to click on the window icon again to let it 'order front'. Sometimes, I observe a very weird behavior of the window being activated. It 'order front' and then disappears and re-appears.
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593
Jun ’24
How to customize the display name of an app in the MacOS dock?
We would like to be able to modify the display name of our app in the dock and finder (etc) but not change the name of the .app bundle. We've tried modifying CFBundleName and CFBundleDisplayName in Info.plist, but this doesn't seem to have an effect. Is there any way to have the displayed name be different from the base name of the app bundle? We want this to apply for all languages. Thanks!
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668
Jun ’24
Umlauts broken in Sonoma 14.4?
When running my app from Xcode Umlauts are all of a sudden broken in several places. The app has been out in the public w/o similar issues for years. For example, this is the result when entering a filename in my NSDocument-based app: So far I could only observe the bug when launching under Sonoma from Xcode but I'm worried this might be a general issue for users of the app running the release build. Any ideas about what happened in macOS 14.4..? Cheers, Jay
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813
Apr ’24
Can NSTextView work with custom NSTextContentManager implementation? (TextKit2)
I'm trying to implement custom NSTextContentManager and use it with NSTextView, however it seems that NSTextView expect NSTextContentStorage all the time. final class MyTextContentManager: NSTextContentManager { // ... } It's added to layout manager, and NSTextView instance finds it properly: let textContentManager = MyTextContentManager() textContentManager.addTextLayoutManager(textLayoutManager) however, when I use it, I see errors at: [MyTextContentManager textStorage]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x600003d84870 the textStorage property is part of NSTextStorageObserving, that is not NSTextContentManager interface. It looks like NSTextView is not ready to work with custom NSTextContentManager. What did I miss?
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2.3k
Sep ’21
SwiftUI crash on macOS 10.13 and 10.14
Hi there, My macOS AppKit/Cocoa app uses Swift and Objective-C, however I'm not using SwiftUI anywhere. Customers launching the app now receive an instant crash due to dyld not being able to locate SwiftUI: Library not loaded: /System/Library/Frameworks/SwiftUI.framework/Versions/A/SwiftUI Again, not using SwiftUI anywhere in my app, cannot find any project references in Xcode that mention SwiftUI - yet checking the generated binary with otool reveals that my app indeed appears to link against SwiftUI. Any idea what happened..? Thanks, Jay
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728
Apr ’24
NSProgressIndicator bindings don't do anything
I'm trying to bind a NSProgressIndicator to Progress, but with the following code I only get an indeterminate progress indicator with a blue bar forever bouncing left and right, even after the two timers fire. According to the documentation: Progress is indeterminate when the value of the totalUnitCount or completedUnitCount is less than zero or if both values are zero. What am I doing wrong? class ViewController: NSViewController { let progress = Progress() override func loadView() { view = NSView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 500, height: 500)) let progressIndicator = NSProgressIndicator(frame: CGRect(x: 100, y: 100, width: 100, height: 100)) progressIndicator.bind(.isIndeterminate, to: progress, withKeyPath: "isIndeterminate") progressIndicator.bind(.value, to: progress, withKeyPath: "completedUnitCount") progressIndicator.bind(.maxValue, to: progress, withKeyPath: "totalUnitCount") progressIndicator.startAnimation(nil) view.addSubview(progressIndicator) progress.completedUnitCount = 3 progress.totalUnitCount = 10 Timer.scheduledTimer(withTimeInterval: 1, repeats: false) { _ in print(1) self.progress.completedUnitCount = 6 } Timer.scheduledTimer(withTimeInterval: 6, repeats: false) { _ in print(2) self.progress.completedUnitCount = 0 self.progress.totalUnitCount = 0 } } }
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633
Apr ’24
NSDocument doesn't enable Save when modified
When the user makes changes in my document, I call document.updateChangeCount(.changeDone) which seems to successfully mark the document as changed - the close button has a dot, the proxy icon is disabled, and when closing/quitting I get the save prompt. The problem is that the File > Save command is never enabled, so saving/quitting is the only way I can get it to save. I'm not overriding any menu validation methods in my NSDocument subclass. I do have a validateMenuItem() in my main view controller, but it's only for a popup menu, and setting a breakpoint there confirms that it only gets called for the popup. What else could be preventing Save from getting enabled? Edit: I tried overriding validateUserInterfaceItem() to return true when appropriate, which works, although the Save command then appears as "Save..." so apparently I'm also responsible for updating the title. In any case this seems like it shouldn't be necessary. I wonder if it's because I implement saving in save(to:ofType:for:completionHandler:) rather than one of the other possibilities. I was going to try wirte(to:ofType) instead but that is surprisingly nonisolated, so I'm not sure how I'm expected to safely access my data model from there. I can't do data(ofType:) because saving may involve writing to multiple files.
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393
May ’24
NSTextView crash with interaction between inserted .link attribute in text storage and NSSpellChecker
I have been getting crash reports from users of my Mac app on Sonoma 14.0 and 14.1 when typing into an NSTextView subclass. The crash logs I have show involvement of the spell-checking system - NSTestCheckingController, NSSpellChecker, and NSCorrectionPanel. The crash is because of an exception being thrown. The throwing method is either [NSString getParagraphStart:end:contentsEnd:forRange:] or [NSTextStorage ensureAttributesAreFixedInRange:]. I have not yet reproduced the crash. I have tried modifying the reference finding process to simply link every word, via NSStringEnumerationByWords. The text view in question recognizes certain things in the entered text and adds hyperlinks to the text while the user is typing. It re-parses and re-adds the links on every key press (via overriding the didChangeText method), on a background thread. From user reports, I have learned that: The crash only occurs on macOS 14.0 and 14.1, not on previous versions The call stack always involves the spell checker, and sometimes involves adding recognized links to the text storage (the call to DispatchQueue.main.async in the code below) The crash stops happening if the user turns off the system spell checker in System Settings -> Keyboard -> Edit on an Input Source -> Correct Spelling Automatically switch The crash does not happen when there are no links in the text view. Here is the relevant code: extension NSMutableAttributedString { func batchUpdates(_ updates: () -> ()) { self.beginEditing() updates() self.endEditing() } } class MyTextView : NSTextView { func didChangeText() { super.didChangeText() findReferences() } var parseToken: CancelationToken? = nil let parseQueue = DispatchQueue(label: "com.myapp.ref_parser") private func findReferences() { guard let storage = self.textStorage else { return } self.parseToken?.requestCancel() let token = CancelationToken() self.parseToken = token let text = storage.string self.parseQueue.async { if token.cancelRequested { return } let refs = RefParser.findReferences(inText: text, cancelationToken: token) DispatchQueue.main.async { if !token.cancelRequested { storage.batchUpdates { var linkRanges: [NSRange] = [] storage.enumerateAttribute(.link, in: NSRange(location: 0, length: storage.length)) { linkValue, linkRange, stop in if let linkUrl = linkValue as? NSURL { linkRanges.append(linkRange) } } for rng in linkRanges { storage.removeAttribute(.link, range: rng) } for r in refs { storage.addAttribute(.link, value: r.url, range: r.range) } } self.verseParseToken = nil } } } } } I've filed this as FB13306015 if any engineers see this. Can anyone
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757
Oct ’23
Debug mysterious window resize?
I am unfortunately faced with a large legacy code base in which Storyboards are heavily used. Now, for some reason, the entire app window is resized if a certain View Controller becomes visible. The issue: Apparently, there aren't any conflicting layout constraints (no LAYOUT_CONSTRAINTS_NOT_SATISFIABLE errors are raised on display of the view controller). There are also no calls to setFrame on the corresponding window. So, how do I debug this? Capturing the view hierarchy didn't provide any helpful insights, and ideally I could just force the window to not resize (due to possible constraint errors). Is there any way to achieve something like this? If not, how can I go about debugging this? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
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509
May ’24
Can't disable App Sandbox
My Xcode workspace contains build settings for a macOS, iOS, and tvOS application. My Sandbox macOS app builds just fine and works great - and is on the App Store. I am in the process of creating a new build / branch of this app that is not Sandboxed so that I can add IPC (Syphon support) - as I don't think I can use App Groups to enable CFMessage support (which Syphon requires) because Syphon (third party framework) - uses its own naming convention for the ports. Anyway, sandbox support for a Syphon app is a topic for another day (it's actually quite disappointing that I can't release a Syphon version on the App Store). The trouble I am having, is that even afer deleting the App Sandbox entitlement from my project, my App still seems to be running in the App Sandbox, and I can't figure out how to remove the App Sandbox entitlement completely. What I am seeing, is that even after deleting the App Sandbox entitlement (using the project settings and deleting it in the "Signing and Capabilities" tab (and also checking the entitlements file manually to doubly make sure it is gone) - I am still seeing the following error message: *** CFMessagePort: bootstrap_register(): failed 1100 (0x44c) 'Permission denied', port = 0x8703, name = 'info.v002.Syphon.332143F7-0916-428A-A88A-59B752F95304' See /usr/include/servers/bootstrap_defs.h for the error codes. It is also saving my Application Support data in the ~/Library/Containers folder, and not in ~/Library/ApplicationSupport What step am I missing?
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1.2k
May ’24
Spelling/grammar check settings persistence in UITextView on Mac Catalyst
In our Mac Catalyst app running on macOS, the Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Check Spelling While Typing, Check Grammar With Spelling, and Correct Spelling Automatically preferences are reset with each opening of a new text view. How can we make those preferences persistent? Ie, when someone changes those settings for our app's text view, other incarnations of our app's text views should respect the latest preferences. We looked at swizzling NSTextView's toggleAutomaticSpellingCorrection:, saving those to NSUserDefaults, and then reading those preferences when we set up our UITextView subclass, and then setting the UITextInputTraits properties accordingly. However, our approach felt heavy handed, and I'm wondering if we are missing some out-of-the-box functionality that will make those preferences intuitively persistent. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.
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558
May ’24
Appkit :: TIPKIT :: TipNSPopover :: Tippopover view is not closing when we clicked on the cross icon in MAC OS application.
By Implementing the TipKit framework in the AppKit Mac OS application, we were unable to close the popover when we clicked on the cross icon presented in TipNSPopover view. And any clues about how to implement the TipNSPopover on Handover of NScollectionview ?. When the mouse enters any of the collection view cells, I have to present the TipNSpopover view. Please share your input and thoughts.
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500
May ’24
Test Finder right-click feature in a desktop app using Swift
I'd like to know how to test behavior in Swift on Desktop that needs to interact with external elements, in my case the Finder. My goal is simple: add an option in the right-click menu of the Finder that will open my application with the selected entry or entries (file or folder) from the Finder. I have thus set the elements NSMenuItem, NSMessage, NSPortName, NSRequiredContext (NSApplicationIdentifier: com.apple.finder) etc. I also created a class FinderService with a function performService having this declaration: func performService(_ pboard: NSPasteboard, userData: String, error: AutoreleasingUnsafeMutablePointer<NSString>) { NSLog("performService called!") } And I instantiated my class like this: NSApplication.shared.servicesProvider = FinderService(). However, when I build and launch the application nothing happens, well my application runs fine and the instantiation of the class seems to be correctly called. But when I open my Finder, my action is not displayed in the right-click context menu. And in the logs of my application, no error appears. How can I test this?
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489
May ’24