Hello, I'm building an app that is designed to largely mimick Apple's own audio auto-switch behavior when switching between different audio output devices like MacBook Pro speakers and AirPods. The purpose is to "lend a hand" to certain apps, like CrossOver (wine) ran x68-64 apps that don't seem to respond well to CoreAudio changing the audio output after the x68-64 program has already init its audio after startup. Thus, I don't actually need much of a GUI except for a few specific features, and perhaps later some ehancements I'd like to add that can make use of a proper GUI.
I've decided to implement the MacOS Tahoe Apple Liquid Glass UI to keep the user experience as streamlined and intuitive as possible. I've largely been successful:
The GitHub page goes into greater detail showing the greater context of the AppKit API's I'm using to achieve this UI design. There is just one issue I haven't been able to solve, how to get the sidebar tab(s) to blur when scrolled underneath the Window Controls (Traffic Light) buttons. These tabs are part of a NSScrollView underneath the NSToolbar aligned from the top-most left and right window edges, but split from the right-hand content side via NSSplitViewController > NSSplitViewItem (again exact topology is at the page "link" below).
On the content side (right side), I used NSSplitViewItemAccessoryViewController to create the blur zone so that when its own NSScrollView content is scrolled upwards, past the toolbar NSToolbar, it would apply a progressive tint+blur effect, just as Apple has implemented in their own apps. This wasn't really automatic since I did have to elect to use it as part of a MacOS 26.1+ specific class (NSScrollEdgeEffectStyle), but it's working on the content side nonetheless:
Now I am trying to get the same effect working on the sidebar side and am having issues with this. Please see the page below as it summarizes our test attempts with greater detail. I've only gotten this far by reading "obscure" comments in the SDK's so I'm really hoping this is just a ID10T error in that I've missed something.
Note: even though I only have 3 tabs currently in the sidebar NSScrollView, I will eventually populate this further, especially with some user configurable stuff on my roadmap. That said, the sidebar is only "scrollable" right now because I've left the "vertical scroll elasticity" enabled, intentionally. (.verticalScrollElasticity [IS NOT] .none! Therefore, I can still "scroll" the enumerated tabs inside the sidebar's NSScrollView upward behind the Traffic Light buttons, to validate if the blur+tint effect is being rendered.
- I say all of that to ask if, perhaps, the reason that the blur+tint effect is not rendering in the Window could be because there's not enough content to render in the sidebar to produce a scrollbar, and simply leaving
.verticalScrollElasticity"enabled" is not sufficient to produce this effect? I don't know that for sure, but it's the only thing I can think of at this point. Its not obvious to me though.
This app is written entirely in Swift (v6.3.3) and will require a minimum of MacOS Tahoe 26.1.X due to the AppKit API's I'm using (namely NSScrollEdgeEffectStyle).
GitHub Page documenting issue in greater detail (remove the spaces):
HT TP S:// gitdev.brianbutts.me /sidebar-scroll-edge-blur. html