Hello all- I am trying to develop a NSStatusItem that operates like Spotlight. In other words, an application that resides in the main menu bar that, when clicked on, will display a search field followed by a list of items.

Now, it is easy to make an NSStatusItem with a custom view. I started out with a NSPopUpButton with a menu loaded. This works great for listing the items. It also handles the button clicks and focus nicely. Therefore, I was hoping to simply subclass NSMenu (or NSPopUpButton) and push down the item list to fit a search field. However, I cannot seem to figure out how NSMenu draws itself (so that I can override it). Or, how NSPopUpButton loads the menu (so I can override that).

Anyone have any ideas/ suggestions? Or, a better way of doing this? Kinda stumped…

Thanks in advanced. -Ryan

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See NSMenuExtra

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Yeah, but NSMenuExtra is not really good to use. It is more like a hack. NSStatusItem works great, I just need a way to subclass an NSMenu to display something different. Or, I have to write my own control.

-Ryan

NSMenuExtra isn’t a total hack…but that’s not the issue here. Both NSMenuExtra and NSStatusItem use NSMenu to display their interface (by default, anyway). The way to do this might be to just show and hide a BorderlessWindow when the menu bar icon is clicked. –JediKnil

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You currently cannot place a custom view in an NSMenuItem, at least not in Cocoa, using the public API. I think that a custom NSWindow would be the best alternative in this situation. -DF