I have Mac apps that embed “Helper Apps” inside their main bundle. The helper apps do work on behalf of the main application.
The helper app doesn’t show a dock icon, it does show minimal UI like an open panel in certain situations (part of NSService implementation). And it does make use of the NSApplication lifecycle and auto quits after it completes all work.
Currently the helper app is inside the main app bundle at: /Contents/Applications/HelperApp.app
Prior to Tahoe these were never displayed to user in LaunchPad but now the Spotlight based AppLauncher displays them.
What’s the recommended way to get these out of the Spotlight App list on macOS Tahoe?
Thanks in advance.
Selecting any option will automatically load the page
Post
Replies
Boosts
Views
Activity
Returning to a Mac Catalyst app that I put to the side for awhile..when running it on Xcode 26.1 it crashes at launch with:
Assertion failure in -[NSToolbarItemGroupView _layoutWrapperViewsWithAttributes:], NSToolbarItemGroupView.m:599
No attributes were found for item
Call stack has a bunch of Autolayout code in AppKit like:
[NSWindow(NSConstraintBasedLayoutInternal) _layoutViewTree] + 120
50 AppKit 0x00000001911e8a10 -[NSWindow(NSConstraintBasedLayoutInternal) layoutIfNeeded] + 240
51 UIKitMacHelper 0x00000001a98f293c -[UINSWindow layoutIfNeeded] + 56
A few unnamed symbols mixed in maybe that's that Swiftness beneath the surface. App is just murdered on launch. I assume this is related to using NSToolbarItemGroup when building an NSToolbar...
I do see this log out:
NSToolbarItemGroup does not support selectionMode. Create the group with one of the class constructors to support selection.
Which is an interesting log so I commented out all calls to setSelectionMode: but still the same crash.
I do set the groups subitems property directly (I do not use the class constructors as the logging statement above indicates). I have no idea if using the class constructors will workaround this issue or not but I'm not particularly excited about that idea because I have items in the same toolbar group with different actions.
Looks like I'm having a bad morning. I'm on 10.11.6 and Xcode 7.3.1.Xcode keeps crashing. When I re-launch Xcode, it restores the window of my open project and crashes again. I rebooted my machine and was able to start working again for about 5 minutes and now it is doing it again.When relaunching I get:Xcode quit unexpectedly while using the dsc_extractor.bundle plug-in.I sent probably 10-15 crash reports to Apple.
Where's the link for the "Guides and Sample Code" page (located here: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/navigation/I kow the URL because I know it, but why isn't there a link to it on the main developer page (since release notes and other important tidbits get published there)? Why's it so hard to find?Or is it right in front of my face and I'm not seeing it?
I wrote a little something that uses WKWebView. It seems that print: does not work though (macOS app).I'm kind of regretting using WKWebView over the old school WebView...anyone have a workaround?
So, a UItableview inside a *regular* UIViewController (not using UITableviewcontroller).1) This view controller is embedded in a UINavigationController. The navigation item has "automatic' large title mode.2) The navigation controller's nav bar prefers large title.3) When the table view is scrolled, the big title does *not* shrink to the *regular* title size like in the iOS mail app. Instead, the table view content overlaps the navbar and bleeds through, making a UI glitch.On iOS 12 the scrolled content does not overlap the nav bar. This is new in IOS 13. Anyone get this and have a workaround?
I'm getting ready to release a new app that uses CloudKit. I just deployed my Development schema to Production in CloudKit dashboard.
Is there a way to run my app from Xcode using the CloudKit Production environment for testing? Details of how to test in the production environment are described here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/DataManagement/Conceptual/CloudKitQuickStart/TestingYourApp/TestingYourApp.html
But would be faster (and easier for debugging potential issues) if I could select tell Xcode to use the production environment when running from the debugger. Is this supported?
Thanks
So I built my app with Mac Catalyst. I see this little line appear and disappear periodically in the window. Then all of a sudden it disappears when the window's activation state changes sometimes. It looks like a weird little glitch.
Turns out this is the title bar's separator which is UITitlebarSeparatorStyleAutomatic (I believe the system hides/shows the separator in this mode based on current window states. I change the separator style to shadow and sure enough it draws like a shadow and never disappears. It's not even close to where the separator is supposed to be (nowhere near the title bar).
The only workaround I have is to use UITitlebarSeparatorStyleNone which I'll do if I have to but was wondering if someone else has run into this and has a better workaround.
I have a UIActivity subclass that generates data asynchronously. So as an example say we have a "Generate Spreadsheet" activity. In the implementation of the activity:
-(UIViewController*)activityViewController
{
if (_backingViewController == nil)
{
_backingViewController = [[ActivityWithProgressUIViewController alloc]init];
[self performActivity]; // <-- start the activity... always required to manually start the activity when providing a view controller.
}
return _backingViewController;
}// return non-nil to have view controller presented modally. call activityDidFinish at end. default returns nil
Then in -performActivity override...do the work...
-(void)performActivity
{
NSLog(@"start performing...pretend we are creating a spreadsheet..");
dispatch_after(dispatch_time(DISPATCH_TIME_NOW, (int64_t)(10 * NSEC_PER_SEC)), dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
[self activityDidFinish:YES];
NSLog(@"Finished performing.");
});
}
And that works on iOS. On Mac Catalyst the system never dismisses the view controller returned by UIActivity subclass. Also the UIActivityViewController's completionWithItemsHandler is called immediately after the custom activity is invoked, the system doesn't wait for the custom activity to call -activityDidFinish: The system just leaves the abandoned view controller returned by the custom activity on screen.
Works fine on iOS. Easy to reproduce in a sample project.
I have a NSWindow subclass. The window has a custom shape, and thus has a custom contentView which overrides drawRect to draw .
Since the window has a custom shape it cannot use the system provided titlebar.
The problem I'm having is when there are multiple screens, if my window is on the inactive screen (not mainScreen with menu bar) and I move the mouse over to the second monitor and click the window....the menu bar doesn't travel to the screen my app is on after the window is clicked.
This does not happen with any other window. In all other windows, the menu bar moves to the screen once you click a window on that screen. So it appears this is because my window is not using NSWindowStyleMaskTitled. As far as I know, I can't use the system title bar and draw my custom window shape. Abandoning the custom window shape is not an option.
Without going into too many details as to why I care, the menu bar really should travel with first click on my window like other apps.. Is there a way to tell the system (other than using the NSWindowStyleMaskTitled) that clicking on my window should make that screen the "main screen" (bring the menu bar over?
I tried programmatically activating the application, ordering the window to the front, etc. but none of this works. This forces the user to click outside my app window, say on the desktop, to move the menu bar over, which feels wrong.
Thanks in advance if anyone has any suggestions.
I just created a new project in the newest version of Xcode as a sample project for a feedback.
Bug 1
So simply what I do in every new project is create a "Supporting Files" group (not a folder because I don't want to move these files on the file system). I put the following files in this group:
.entitlements file
-the Info.plist (which apparently new projects don't create anymore because I don't see one).
main.m
Assets.xcassets
In previous version of Xcode this was done with the "New Group without Folder" action (though back in the day I believe you'd get yellow folders in "New Group" and blue folder with 'New Folder" and they were separate actions.... which was actually better and much less insane IMO but that's not really important to this).
In any case, "New Group without Folder" is nowhere to be found in the context menu. I finally was able to get "New Group" to appear as long as I wasn't right clicking underneath any directory. But.... New Group actually creates a New Folder, just like New Folder. So I put the .entitlements in the Supporting Files group (which is not a group, but a directory) and the app won't compile unless I fix the path in project settings because I moved the file which is most definitely not what I wanted.
So we can no longer group files in the project navigator without moving them to new directories? Is this intentional behavior? It can't be, right?
Bug 2
I noticed dragging and dropping to reorder files in the project navigator no longer seems to work? In previous versions of Xcode I could drag and drop to reorder files (in groups and in folders, this would work). This appears to no longer work. I just have to accept the way Xcode orders my project files?
So I just updated Xcode to 16.3 and updated a project to its recommended build settings which includes "Register App Groups".
So I have an outside Mac App Store app that uses app groups. Here we have an action extension. I can't debug it, can't get it to run. Nothing useful in Xcode is displayed when I try... but it looks like a code signing issue when I run and have Console open.
So I try to make a provisioning profile manually and set it...didn't work. I noticed now though in signing & capabilities the group id is in red...like it's invalid, or something?
This was a "macOS styled" group without the "group." prefix. So am I supposed to switch it to have the group. prefix? It makes the red text go away (no warnings or anything about app groups here, just red text).
So if I change it to group. prefix..does that make an entire new container?What happens on app update for installs that don't have group. prefix? Does the system transparently migrate the group? Or Am I supposed to migrate the entire group container to the identifier with group. prefix?
Also how does this affect running on older version of macOS? If I go with the "group." prefix to make the red text go away,.. what happens on macOS 11.0? Got a little more than I bargained for here after midnight.
Appkit starting logging these warnings in macOS 26.1 about my app's MainMenu.
**Internal inconsistency in menus - menu <NSMenu: 0xb91b2ff80>
Title: AppName
Supermenu: 0xb91a50b40 (Main Menu), autoenable: YES
Previous menu: 0x0 (None)
Next menu: 0x0 (None)
Items: ()
believes it has [<NSMenuSubclassHereThisIsTheMenuBarMenuForMyApp:] 0xb91a50b40>
Title: Main Menu
Supermenu: 0x0 (None), autoenable: YES
Previous menu: 0x0 (None)
Next menu: 0x0 (None)
Items: (
) as a supermenu, but the supermenu does not seem to have any item with that submenu
**
I don't what that means. The supermenu is the menu that represents the menu used for my app's menu bar (as described by NSMenuSubclassHereThisIsTheMenuBarMenuForMyApp
Everything seems to work fine but log looks scary. Please don't throw!
I just tried submitting an app to be notarized. This app is actually only used by me internally (but I have other apps this question would be relevant to) and I can't submit for notarization. I get the following error:
"Hardened Runtime is not enabled."
Is the Hardened Runtime now required? I know it used to be optional (I believe the last time I submitted an app update a few months ago outside the Mac App Store I got no such error).
Periodically when testing I am running into a situation where the app hangs and beach balls forever when using AVAudioEngine.
This seems to log out when this affect happens:
Now when this happens if I pause the debugger it's hanging at a call to:
[engine connect:playerNode
to:engine.mainMixerNode
format:buffer.format];
#0 0x000000019391ca9c in __psynch_mutexwait ()
#1 0x0000000104d49100 in _pthread_mutex_firstfit_lock_wait ()
#2 0x0000000104d49014 in _pthread_mutex_firstfit_lock_slow ()
#3 0x00000001938928ec in std::__1::recursive_mutex::lock ()
#4 0x00000001ef80e988 in CADeprecated::RealtimeMessenger::_PerformPendingMessages ()
#5 0x00000001ef818868 in AVAudioNodeTap::Uninitialize ()
#6 0x00000001ef7fdc68 in AUGraphNodeBase::Uninitialize ()
#7 0x00000001ef884f38 in AVAudioEngineGraph::PerformCommand ()
#8 0x00000001ef88e780 in AVAudioEngineGraph::_Connect ()
#9 0x00000001ef8b7e70 in AVAudioEngineImpl::Connect ()
#10 0x00000001ef8bc05c in -[AVAudioEngine connect:to:format:] ()
Current all my audio engine related calls are on the main queue (though I am curious about this https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/123540?answerId=816827022#816827022).
In any case, anyone know where I'm going wrong here?