As always, the #developer documentation from #Apple for new features in the now almost one year old #macOS 15 is completely amazing, full of detail, hints, and usage recommendations.

/s

NOT!

Seriously, how does Apple expect us to write insanely great apps with that complete dummy of a documentation?

Anyhow, you add that new method to any custom NSView you have, so that invoking the contextual menu in macOS "Sequoia" with the keyboard, using the new hotkey Alt-Return, knows !where! in your view the current selection is being displayed, and the context menu thus shall appear.

sometimes simple code is best. i really like this category method on NSFileManager:

```
- (BOOL)linkOrCopyItemAtURL:(nonnull NSURL *)srcURL toURL:(nonnull NSURL *)dstURL error:(NSError *__autoreleasing _Nullable * _Nullable)error {

BOOL success = [self linkItemAtURL:srcURL toURL:dstURL error:error];

return (success) ?: [self copyItemAtURL:srcURL toURL:dstURL error:error];

}

```

#obj-C #AppKit

Another small detail I’ve implemented in #Oliphaunt: the Lists timeline now synchronises with the sidebar’s Lists group. Quite pleased with the smooth animation — it’s those subtle touches that make the difference.

DarwinKit looks interesting. It’s a Golang Framework to build macOS apps and lets you call Objective-C APIs.
#golang #macos #macdev #objectivec #appkit

https://github.com/progrium/darwinkit

DST change reminded me of that time QA discovered that, if you build a date from NSDateComponents, any missing items will not be set to zero, but will be set to the corresponding value from the current date and time.

Which meant that my March 30th, 12:00 would get random one-minute-drift like 12:00:59 because the user entered the date right before a minute change.

Makes sense for the date, but was a bit bewildering for the time, especially seconds.

RM2000 is now available for public beta testing via Apple TestFlight

I wanted to make a curating & idea collection app (think of bookmark managers, PureRef, or Are.na) but for snippets of sound playing anywhere from your computer.

Let me know what you think!

https://testflight.apple.com/join/jtGpAsYy #skeuomorphism #swiftui #appkit #macos

It’s kind of strange that if you have several NSToolbars in your app and the user customizes the display mode in one of them to, say, “Icon and Text” this state does not sync to all of the app’s toolbars. There also doesn’t seem to be any obvious way to observe changes to these settings. I guess that’s just okay and the user is expected to customize them all separately..?

Or I wait until next WWDC and our Mac windows won’t have toolbars anymore as they have been designed for “the next generation of users”.

#AppKit #UIKit #CollectionView

Any (NS/UI)CollectionView fans here? I’m trying to make a good collection view UI. It is just a simple flat scrolling column of things, should be simple layout.

I want the cells to size themselves to the SwiftUI content in them, which they almost do, but not when I resize the window and things start to wrap differently.

What am I missing? How should I make the heights respond better to window resizing?

Code: https://gist.github.com/jaanus/66e3d863941ba645c88220b8a22970e1

The 2nd edition of macOS Apprentice is now available from Kodeco. This is my book for beginners or near-beginners who want to start learning Swift, SwiftUI and AppKit for building Mac apps.

It's now been updated for Swift 5.9, macOS 15 and Xcode 16.2.

More details at https://troz.net/post/2025/macos-apprentice-update/

Read the book at https://www.kodeco.com/books/macos-apprentice/

A small detail I implemented in the #Oliphaunt sidebars is synchronised animations when using drag and drop. I’m quite pleased with how it turns out!

Introducing a little passion project RM2000 Tape Recorder is a macOS tool for recording and managing audio samples as fast as possible

Platform-agnostic tagging system, never meant to lock you into any service. Optimized for performance, private by design. The digital equivalent of a Yamaha SU10 with the looks of a Sony PCM-D100

Built using fully native macOS technologies (SwiftUI + AppKit). Modified version of Tachyo as the main font face (thank you @ensix !)

Available on the Mac App Store soon — Free Public Beta Testing opens by Feburary via Apple TestFlight

30 seconds into a #SwiftUI app and the toolbar divider does not disappear when completely scrolled to the top like any other #AppKit or even #UIKit #Catalyst app. God, have mercy. So frustrating that I have to lose out on all the SwiftUI goodies just because the damn framework can't even get the basics right.

Holy Smokes! I just downloaded a demo project from Apples website from 2010. After changing the SDK in the build settings Xcode builds the project without any problems.

Try that with you SwiftUI project from 2019.

Cultured Code's Things app used to be one of those shining examples, good-Mac-citizen apps. The UI and UX was just *chef’s kiss*. The icons and design would make you think 2010 Apple designed it.

I miss when we had a good visual distinction between user content and UI belonging to the app. Not all types of content needs to "blend" with your app's UI. A computer is still a tool at the end of the day, not just something to sit there and look pretty.

Did you know Music Widget has an option to change its app icon based on Music-player state *and* system light/dark mode? It also changes/persists in the Dock when Music Widget isn't running.

https://marioaguzman.github.io/musicwidget/
#macOS #AppleMusic #MusicWidget #AppKit

If you bought my macOS by Tutorials book, what is your preferred format for reading it? https://troz.net/books/macos_tutorials/

Took me a while to figure out again that AppKits coordinate system is reversed. One of the most stupid things.
#appkit #macosdev #swift #iosdev