Objective-c – Auto-hide the OS X menu bar system-wide

cocoacode-injectionmacosobjective c

I wish to write a utility to auto-hide the menu bar, much like the dock. This would
replicate the a OS X 10.4-only application "Menufela", but for Snow Leopard.

[[NSApplication sharedApplication]
     setPresentationOptions:   NSApplicationPresentationAutoHideMenuBar
                             | NSApplicationPresentationAutoHideDock];

This code auto-hides the menu bar (and dock), but only in when the application is the frontmost window. How would I go about applying this behaviour system wide, regardless of what application is open?

The only thing I can think of is an InputManager, but I haven't written one before, thus I'm unsure if this is the correct way to go about it..

Also it seems InputManagers are limited as of Leopard/Snow Leopard – from this SO question:

it won't run them in a process owned by root or whell, nor in a process which has modified its uid. Most significantly, 10.5 won't load an Input Manager into a 64 bit process and has indicated that even 32 bit use is unsupported and will be removed in a future release.

I'm not concerned about the "will be removed in a future release" (it just has to work on Snow Leopard), and I don't think root-owned processes are an issue (all GUI applications should be running as the current), but presumably the code would have to be injected into many 64-bit applications (Finder/Safari/etc)

(I originally asked this on SuperUser, here, but as there was seemingly no existing utility to achieve this, it's more relevant to StackOverflow)

Best Answer

The kiosk API is probably your best bet for this, though I haven't used it in years and don't know if it's even supported anymore.

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2002/tn2062.html

Related Solutions

Objective-c – Standard (32/64-bit Universal), WebKit, Flash Plugin and Leopard

Flash will not load in 64bit on Leopard as it is 32bit code. WebKit on SnowLeopard can run Flash in 64bit because it runs Flash in a completely separate (32-bit) process.

R – Menu of app in Status Bar wont work on Snow Leopard

It sounds likely that your menu item's action outlet isn't "hooked up" to anything in your code. I don't know from your description whether or not you created the menu in interface builder or are creating it programmatically, but the first thing to do would be to check there. Make sure that if you're creating the menu programmatically, that you've spelled the method name correctly in the @selector() (if you've got warnings that say "[class] may not respond to -Foo" that's a big tip off of a typo).

If the connections are looking good, I'd break point the method set as your action and verify that you're actually calling the method you think you are.

If you're setting the connections programmatically, breakpoint the addItemWithTitle: (or equivalent call) call and ensure that your NSMenuItem setup correctly immediately after stepping over that line.

---EDIT---

After looking over the posted code, there are several fundamental flaws with it, any of which could be causing the breakage under 10.6.

First, you're confusing the role of a delegate in relation to the menu. The delegate should not be your NSMenu object, your delegate should be an object that is invoked as a "call back" by the NSMenuItem to provide custom logic. You need not be extending NSMenu at all, and your MenuTestAppDelegate should only be extended from NSObject.
The class of your Menu object in your MainMenu.xib file is of type MenuTest, but you don't have a MenuTest class declared in your project. Hopefully this is merely a copy/paste error while you were setting up your test project, but you should check it out.
I find it far easier to set up the NSStatusItem's menu programmatically. Try this:

// create the menu
- (void)createMenu
{   
    NSMenu* aMenu = [NSMenu new];
    [aMenu setDelegate:self];

    NSMenuItem* quitItem = [[NSMenuItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"quitItem"
                           action:@selector(quitSelected:) 
                           keyEquivalent:@""];

    [aMenu addItem:quitItem];
    [quitItem release];

    NSStatusItem* statusItem = [[NSStatusBar systemStatusBar]
                               statusItemWithLength:NSVariableStatusItemLength];

    NSImage* itemImage = [[NSImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:
                         [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"image" ofType:@"png"]];
    NSImage* itemAlternate = [[NSImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:
                             [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"alternate" ofType:@"png"]];

    [statusItem setImage:itemImage];
    [statusItem setAlternateImage:itemAlternate];

    [statusItem setHighlightMode:YES];
    [statusItem setMenu:aMenu];
}

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