Post

Replies

Boosts

Views

Activity

NSTableView is unresponsive when inside a modal window shown in DispatchQueue.main.async
In my app I have a background task performed on a custom DispatchQueue. When it has completed, I update the UI in DispatchQueue.main.async. In a particular case, the app then needs to show a modal window that contains a table view, but I have noticed that when scrolling through the tableview, it only responds very slowly. It appears that this happens when the table view in the modal window is presented in DispatchQueue.main.async. Presenting it in perform(_:with:afterDelay:) or in a Timer.scheduledTimer(withTimeInterval:repeats:block:) on the other hand works. Why? This seems like an ugly workaround. I created FB7448414 in November 2019 but got no response. @NSApplicationMain class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate { func applicationDidFinishLaunching(_ aNotification: Notification) { let windowController = NSWindowController(window: NSWindow(contentViewController: ViewController())) // 1. works // runModal(for: windowController) // 2. works // perform(#selector(runModal), with: windowController, afterDelay: 0) // 3. works // Timer.scheduledTimer(withTimeInterval: 0, repeats: false) { [self] _ in // self.runModal(for: windowController) // } // 4. doesn't work DispatchQueue.main.async { self.runModal(for: windowController) } } @objc func runModal(for windowController: NSWindowController) { NSApp.runModal(for: windowController.window!) } } class ViewController: NSViewController, NSTableViewDataSource, NSTableViewDelegate { override func loadView() { let tableView = NSTableView() tableView.dataSource = self tableView.delegate = self tableView.addTableColumn(NSTableColumn()) let scrollView = NSScrollView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 400, height: 400)) scrollView.documentView = tableView scrollView.hasVerticalScroller = true scrollView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false view = scrollView } func numberOfRows(in tableView: NSTableView) -> Int { return 100 } func tableView(_ tableView: NSTableView, viewFor tableColumn: NSTableColumn?, row: Int) -> NSView? { let view = NSTableCellView() let textField = NSTextField(labelWithString: "\(row)") textField.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false view.addSubview(textField) NSLayoutConstraint.activate([textField.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.leadingAnchor), textField.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.trailingAnchor), textField.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.topAnchor), textField.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.bottomAnchor)]) return view } }
4
0
151
Jun ’25
Selecting ~/Library in open panel doesn't give access to ~/Library/Mail
A user of my app brought to my attention that unless they select their ~/Library/Mail folder explicitly in an open panel, they get an error when scanning it inside my app. I can confirm that I also get a permission error when trying to scan it as a subfolder of ~/Library, but not if I select it directly. I'm assuming this is intentional, but it would be nice to have an explanation or some documentation that I can point my users to when they encounter what appears to them as a bug in my app. What makes this matter even more confusing is that selecting a folder in any open panel of an app gives the app access to it for the lifetime of the app, but after restarting the app, access is lost again (unless it has a bookmark to it). This was probably the reason why the user thought that it worked in another app but not in mine. This is the code I use to scan: let openPanel = NSOpenPanel() openPanel.canChooseDirectories = true if openPanel.runModal() == .cancel { return } let enumerator = FileManager.default.enumerator(at: openPanel.urls[0], includingPropertiesForKeys: nil) { url, error in print(url.path, error) return true } while let url = enumerator?.nextObject() as? URL { } And this the error related to the Mail folder: ~/Library/Mail Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=257 "The file “Mail” couldn’t be opened because you don’t have permission to view it." UserInfo={NSURL=file:///~/Library/Mail, NSFilePath=/~/Library/Mail, NSUnderlyingError=0x600002991470 {Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"}}
4
0
119
Sep ’25
NSMenu.popUp(positioning:at:in:) doesn't enable menu items when opened inside modal window
In my app I use NSMenu.popUp(positioning:at:in:) for displaying a menu in response to the user clicking a button. But it seems that when the menu is opened inside a modal window, all the menu items are always disabled. Using NSMenu.popUpContextMenu(_:with:for:) instead works. What's the reason and what's the difference between the two methods? According to the documentation, one is for opening "popup menus" and the other for opening "context menus", but I cannot see an explanation of the difference between the two. @main class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate { func applicationDidFinishLaunching(_ aNotification: Notification) { let window = NSWindow(contentViewController: ViewController()) NSApp.runModal(for: window) } } class ViewController: NSViewController { override func loadView() { let button = NSButton(title: "Click", target: self, action: #selector(click(_:))) view = NSView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 400, height: 400)) view.addSubview(button) } @objc func click(_ sender: Any?) { let menu = NSMenu(title: "") menu.addItem(withTitle: "asdf", action: #selector(asdf(_:)), keyEquivalent: "") menu.addItem(withTitle: "bla", action: nil, keyEquivalent: "") menu.items[0].target = self menu.items[1].target = self // NSMenu.popUpContextMenu(menu, with: NSApp.currentEvent!, for: view) // this works menu.popUp(positioning: nil, at: .zero, in: view) // this doesn't work } @IBAction func asdf(_ sender: Any) { print(0) } }
Topic: UI Frameworks SubTopic: AppKit Tags:
3
0
835
Feb ’24
Select directory in SwiftUI file importer
I want to show a file importer that allows to select both regular files as well as directories. When running the following code on iOS, I can tap a PDF file and the file importer closes as expected, but when tapping a directory, the file importer shows its contents. How can I instead select that directory and close the file importer? The navigation bar shows a Cancel button, but no Open button. struct FileView: View { @State private var showFileImporter = false var body: some View { ScrollView { VStack(alignment: .leading) { VStack(alignment: .center) { Button("Open") { showFileImporter = true } } } } .fileImporter(isPresented: $showFileImporter, allowedContentTypes: [.pdf, .directory], onCompletion: { result in // TODO }) } }
3
0
2.6k
Apr ’24
Apple Care tells users who cannot download/update app from App Store that the third-party developer is responsible
While this isn't an issue directly related with programming, I would like to share my frustration with Apple Care and their knowledge of how App Store and third-party apps work. Perhaps someone at Apple can do something about it. Every now and then a user of one of my apps contacts me asking why they get an error when downloading or updating the app in the App Store ("Unable to Download App. “App” could not be installed. Please try again later."). I tell them that third-party developers have no power over the App Store or its download/update process, and this is an issue they have to solve with Apple Care. But when they contact Apple Care, they are told that since it's an issue with a third-party app, they have to contact the app developer. Sometimes the user is more inclined to believe what Apple Care tells them and they get angry at me. In any case, I feel helpless and frustrated, because I would love to help them, but have no means of doing so. There is something about the concept of App Store that makes some users believe that third-party developers have more power than they actually have: sometimes, for example, users contact me directly, or even leave reviews on the App Store, asking for a refund, which of course only Apple can do. Have you had a similar experience? Can some engineer at Apple instruct Apple Care that third-party developers cannot help with App Store download/update issues, so that App Store users don't get mad at the app developers for not being able to install/update their app?
3
0
791
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 } } }
Topic: UI Frameworks SubTopic: AppKit Tags:
3
0
880
Jun ’24
Share settings from SwiftUI in-app settings view to other views
In SwiftUI we can use @AppStorage to save app settings. In my app, I have a settings view which allows the user to change various settings. Since there are many of them, it's not practical to declare a binding for each setting between the settings view and whatever other views effectively use that setting. Is there a more convenient way to store a setting in one view and access it in another view?
3
0
903
Jun ’24
Sample projects of NEFilterProvider use IPC but the documentation says that it blocks IPC
The sample project Filtering Network Traffic uses IPC (NSXPCConnection etc.) to send data from the network extension to the app, but the documentation for NEFilterProvider says The sandbox prevents the Filter Data Provider extension from moving network content outside of its address space by blocking all network access, IPC, and disk write operations. Since my network extension forwards all network traffic to the app so that the user can see it, I was wondering when the app isn’t running and the user shuts down the machine, if the network extension could write the flows it wasn’t able to forward to the app to disk, so that it could read them on the next successful connection to the app. Then almost by accident I read again the documentation and according to the quoted passage a network extension cannot write to disk, but it also cannot use IPC. Is NSXPCConnection not considered IPC, or could the statement that it cannot write to disk be false as well?
3
0
514
Jul ’24
How to debug Quick Look Preview Extension
When I launch the Quick Look Preview Extension target in Xcode, an app called Quick Look Simulator opens with an almost empty window: Online I read that the Terminal command qlmanage allows to test Quick Look plugins (which I think were an older format for creating Quick Look extensions), but running qlmanage -p /path/to/previewed/file -c public.text -g /path/to/QuickLookPreviewExtension.appex (where QuickLookPreviewExtension.appex is generated by the Xcode build and is located in the DerivedData folder) gives an error Can't get generator at QuickLookPreviewExtension.appex How can I debug a Quick Look Preview Extension?
3
2
945
May ’25
How can I share a developer-signed app through my website?
In the past, I used to export a developer-signed test version of my macOS app in Xcode, create a zip archive from the Finder, upload it to my website and share the link to the testers. The last time I did this with macOS 14 the tester was still able to download the test app and run it. But it seems that with macOS 15 the trick to open the context menu on the downloaded app and click Open to bypass the macOS warning that the app couldn't be checked when simply double-clicking it, doesn't work anymore. Now I'm always shown an alert that macOS couldn't check the app for malware, and pushes me to move it to the bin. In this StackOverflow topic from 10 years ago they suggested to use ditto and tar to compress and uncompress the app, but neither worked for me. How can I share macOS apps that I signed myself with testers without physically handing them a drive containing the uncompressed app?
3
0
782
Nov ’24
copyfile causes NSPOSIXErrorDomain 12 "Cannot allocate memory" when copying symbolic link from NTFS partition
I was able to confirm with a customer of mine that calling copyfile with a source file that is a symbolic link on a NTFS partition always causes the error NSPOSIXErrorDomain 12 Cannot allocate memory They use NTFS drivers from Paragon. They tried copying a symbolic link from NTFS to both APFS and NTFS with the same result. Is this an issue with macOS, or with the NTFS driver? Copying regular files on the other hand always works. Copying manually from the Finder also seems to always work, both with regular files and symbolic links, so I'm wondering how the Finder does it. Here is the sample app that they used to reproduce the issue. The first open panel allows to select the source directory and the second one the destination directory. The variable filename holds the name of the symbolic link to be copied from the source to the destination. Apparently it's not possible to select a symbolic link directly in NSOpenPanel, as it always resolves to the linked file. @main class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate { func applicationDidFinishLaunching(_ notification: Notification) { let openPanel = NSOpenPanel() openPanel.canChooseDirectories = true openPanel.canChooseFiles = false openPanel.runModal() let filename = "Modules" let source = openPanel.urls[0].appendingPathComponent(filename) openPanel.runModal() let destination = openPanel.urls[0].appendingPathComponent(filename) do { let state = copyfile_state_alloc() defer { copyfile_state_free(state) } var bsize = UInt32(16_777_216) if copyfile_state_set(state, UInt32(COPYFILE_STATE_BSIZE), &bsize) != 0 { throw NSError(domain: NSPOSIXErrorDomain, code: Int(errno)) } if copyfile_state_set(state, UInt32(COPYFILE_STATE_STATUS_CB), unsafeBitCast(copyfileCallback, to: UnsafeRawPointer.self)) != 0 || copyfile_state_set(state, UInt32(COPYFILE_STATE_STATUS_CTX), unsafeBitCast(self, to: UnsafeRawPointer.self)) != 0 || copyfile(source.path, destination.path, state, copyfile_flags_t(COPYFILE_NOFOLLOW)) != 0 { throw NSError(domain: NSPOSIXErrorDomain, code: Int(errno)) } } catch { let error = error as NSError let alert = NSAlert() alert.messageText = "\(error.localizedDescription)\n\(error.domain) \(error.code)" alert.runModal() } } private let copyfileCallback: copyfile_callback_t = { what, stage, state, src, dst, ctx in if what == COPYFILE_COPY_DATA { if stage == COPYFILE_ERR { return COPYFILE_QUIT } var size: off_t = 0 copyfile_state_get(state, UInt32(COPYFILE_STATE_COPIED), &size) } return COPYFILE_CONTINUE } }
3
0
580
Dec ’24
Notification when mounting volume on iOS
On macOS, we have didMountNotification but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for iOS. Is there a way to be notified when a volume is mounted on iOS? I would like to use it in my iOS app I'm currently porting from macOS, which starts a synchronization from the volume (which has been previously selected in a NSOpenPanel) as soon as it's mounted.
3
0
363
Feb ’25
Crash in IndexSet.map during menu item validation in client report downloaded by Xcode
For many years I've had the following code to access the active objects of a table view in my App Store app: class MyViewController: NSViewController: NSMenuItemValidation { private var tableView: NSTableView! private var objects = [MyObject]() func numberOfRows(in tableView: NSTableView) -> Int { return objects.count } func tableView(_ tableView: NSTableView, viewFor tableColumn: NSTableColumn?, row: Int) -> NSView? { // make view for row } private var activeObjects: [MyObject] { return tableView?.activeRowIndexes.map({ objects[$0] }) ?? [] } func validateMenuItem(_ menuItem: NSMenuItem) -> Bool { let activeObjects = self.activeObjects ... } } extension NSTableView { var activeRowIndexes: IndexSet { return clickedRow == -1 || selectedRowIndexes.contains(clickedRow) ? selectedRowIndexes : IndexSet(integer: clickedRow) } } In one of the recent updates, I wanted to add some kind of header to the table view, so I decided to add a row at the beginning and offset the indexes by 1. func numberOfRows(in tableView: NSTableView) -> Int { return objects.count + 1 } func tableView(_ tableView: NSTableView, viewFor tableColumn: NSTableColumn?, row: Int) -> NSView? { if row == 0 { // make header view } else { // make view for row - 1 } } private var activeObjects: [MyObject] { return tableView?.activeRowIndexes.subtracting(IndexSet(integer: 0)).map({ objects[$0 - 1] }) ?? [] } But since I added this change, Xcode regularly downloads crash reports from clients crashing during menu item validation in IndexSet.map with reason Code 5 Trace/BPT trap: 5. I assumed that I was accessing an invalid array index, so I added some debug code: the crash report would then show the invalid index beside the crashed thread's name. private var activeObjects: [MyObject] { return tableView?.activeRowIndexes.subtracting(IndexSet(integer: 0)).map({ i in if !objects.indices.contains(i - 1) { Thread.current.name = (Thread.current.name ?? "") + ". Invalid index \(i - 1) for count \(objects.count)" preconditionFailure() } return objects[i - 1] }) ?? [] } But the crash reports for this new app version look just like the old ones and the thread name is not changed. Indeed, when recreating an invalid index access on my Mac, the crash report mentions Array._checkSubscript(_:wasNativeTypeChecked:), which does not appear in the crash reports downloaded by Xcode. Manually symbolicating the crash report also doesn't give any more information: all lines referring to my app code are resolved to either /<compiler-generated>:0 or MyViewController.swift:0. Apparently the problem is not an invalid array index, but something else. Does anybody have a clue what the problem could be? (Note: the crash report mentions Sequence.compactMap because now I'm effectively calling tableView?.activeRowIndexes.compactMap, but the same crash happened before when calling IndexSet.map, which would appear in the crash report as Collection.map.) crash2.crash
3
0
96
Jul ’25