Topic

macOS

A collection of 14 issues

A Tale of Adopting Customizable SwiftUI Toolbars

Toolbar customization is a staple of a true Mac app with any amount of complex functionality. I want toolbar customization, you want toolbar customization, your users want toolbar customization. However, setting it up using SwiftUI can be less than obvious – or, at least, much less so than when using NSToolbar.

Using the Dump Menu Debug Feature on macOS 27 Beta

The AppKit Debug menu is a debugging tool that has been shipping as part of the framework and hence macOS itself for a few years. The Dump Menu debug feature is a new addition in macOS 27 that I think could be useful.

NSAttributedString and AttributedString Bridging Performance on macOS

With the introduction of the Swift-native AttributedString in iOS 15 and macOS 12, it’s become pretty common to convert between the existing NSAttributedString and the new type. Certain first-party frameworks, like SwiftUI and App Intents, require developers to use the new AttributedString. In existing apps, simply moving

DocumentGroup Breaks focusedSceneValue Propagation

I have already written about another gnarly bug around document-based apps in SwiftUI in a previous post. In that post, I found that on visionOS, any DocumentGroup scene would duplicate your view hierarchy, causing pretty funny looking visual overlaying glitches. It was most visible on visionOS due to the

The Curious Case of NSPanel's Nonactivating Style Mask Flag

While working on a behavior that required dynamically switching between the nonactivating panel behavior and one that is more similar to the regular window behavior, I discovered a subtle but significant issue in AppKit: changing the NSWindowStyleMaskNonactivatingPanel flag after an NSPanel has been initialized doesn't fully update the

Adding Subtitles macOS Menu Items using SwiftUI

At this point, AppKit developers with their finger on the pulse may be familiar with setting subtitles on NSMenuItem using the subtitle property, which has been available since macOS 14.4. In fact, I was the one who added it back when I worked at Apple. Achieving the same in

Building a Universal Mini vMac Application

This project demonstrates a collection of techniques for consolidating various Mini vMac variations into one application, enabling better code reuse and simplifying maintenance.

NSDrawer, Child Windows, and Modern macOS Applications

NSDrawer is undoubtedly one of the more creative and iconic use cases for so-called "child windows" on macOS. Despite that, drawers have been deprecated in macOS 10.13 and seemingly forgotten since then. You can hardly find any use of drawers in any macOS applications these days.

A Time Capsule from NeXT Computer, Inc.

A couple of months ago I took a trip to Fortuna, CA – a roughly 5 hour drive from my home in San Jose – to pick up a Macintosh Quadra 700 for my modest albeit growing collection of vintage hardware. From what I gathered, the person selling the machine finds and

SwiftUI's handling of the Mac menu bar is still pretty bad

While trying out a few things around the SwiftUI document handling and lifecycle in a macOS application, I came across a pretty bad issue. Not only did it not do as the API promised, it actually messed with the menu in ways that would be unrecoverable to a SwiftUI lifecycle