Cocoa Recipes for Mac OS X is a great guide for anyone interested in writing applications for MAC OS X. It is chocked full of USEFUL real-life programming examples. Each chapter successively builds upon the last to churn out and refine a true to the bone Mac OS X application. Chill Pill allows you to enjoy Fever's rich RSS experience while taking advantage of Cocoa and all of the other modern technologies in Mac OS X. System-wide Integration: Filling the void where web applications fail, Chill Pill allows you to set Fever as your default RSS reader, change hot keys via System Preferences, get notified when new items are available, and much more!
- Mac OS X, a unified operating system and graphical operating environment, is the fastest growing Unix variant on the market today. Hard-core Unix programmers, developers who cut their teeth on classic Mac operating systems, and developers who cherished NeXTSTEP, the decade-old system on which today's Cocoa is based - all are flocking to Cocoa.
- UNMAINTAINED A Hello World App in Cocoa for Mac OS X - andrew/hellococoa.
This page contains some of my Cocoa/Objective-C source code for fellow Mac OS X developers.
You're welcome to download and use the source, subject to the License Agreement. It's assumed that you're a developer and you know how to make use of the source; I can't provide support. Happy coding!
Note: all code is unmaintained and unsupported as of 2015.
Donations
Don't panic: you can use all my code without paying anything! Having said that, a lot of work (and time which I should really be spending with my ever-patient wife) has gone into creating the code below. If my code saves you some time and trouble, and you feel like making a small donation to support my future development efforts, it would be very much appreciated.
You can also take a look at my Amazon Wishlist if you like; it's always fun to receive a surprise package in the mail. I've found that many people prefer this method too.
Feel free to contact me (details here) if you have something else in mind.
Chill Cocoa Mac Os Catalina
If you use some of my code, I want to hear from you!
I'm always interested to hear from developers who have found some of my code useful, and I may link to your app too. If your app uses some of my code, get in touch and let me know about it.
License Agreement
The source code is released under a very flexible license, designed to let you use, modify and/or redistribute the code pretty much as you see fit, whilst providing me with basic protection and credit.
Before downloading any of the source code, please have a look at the Source Code License page. Thanks. :)
Using my code without attribution
My source code license agreement requires attribution, but I'm aware that some people need a license agreement which does not require attribution. If you're in that situation, I can help: I've set up an online store where you can quickly and easily buy a non-attribution license to my various source code components. The online license store can be found here.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
Source Code
Unless mentioned otherwise, all source code requires Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) or later, and corresponding versions of the Developer Tools to open the projects. Some source may also be suitable for previous versions of Mac OS X.
Any special requirements a project has are mentioned in a note with the project description.
MGWordCounter provides live word-counting (of both the full text and the current selection) for NSTextView on OS X, and UITextView on iOS.
Read more about it here!
Note: this code requires iOS 5.0 or later, or OS X 10.7 Lion or later. In both cases, ARC is required.
MGTileMenu is a customisable tile-based contextual menu component, for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. It's for iOS 5, and supports ARC, Retina Displays (and non-Retina displays) and VoiceOver accessibility.
Read more about it here!
Note: this code requires the iOS SDK 5.0 or later.
MGSplitViewController is an enhanced replacement for UISplitViewController on the iPad. It allows displaying the master view in either orientation, toggling it with animation, changing the split from horizontal to vertical, dragging the divider, and more.
Read more about it here!
Note: this code requires the iOS SDK 3.2 or later.
Read more about it here!
Note: this code requires the iOS SDK 3.2 or later.
Read more about it here!
Note: this code requires the iOS SDK 3.2 or later.
Read more about it here (and see some videos too)!
Note: this code requires the iOS SDK 3.2 or later.
Read more about it here!
Note: this code requires Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).
It uses a delegate system to get its data, is extremely customizable and has a cool Smart Resize feature for when limited horizontal space is available.
Read more about it here!
Note: this code requires Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).
MGTemplateEngine is a native Cocoa system for generating text output based on templates and data. It's a close cousin of systems like Smarty, FreeMarker, Django's template language, and other such systems.
It's ideal for Cocoa or iPhone apps needing to generate text output using variable-substitution (with looping and/or conditional logic), including HTML for export or for apps with WebKit-based UIs, invoices or printable templates, mail merge, data export or any number of other things. It's also great (in combination with WebKit) for letting your users create themes/styles for your application.
Read more about it here!
Note: this code requires Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or iPhone OS 2.0.
Note: this code was written on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), and the project requires Xcode 3. The code itself should run just fine on Tiger too.
MGTwitterEngine (on github)
MGTwitterEngine is a class which lets you integrate Twitter support into your Cocoa application, by making use of the Twitter API. The entire API is covered, and appropriate data is returned as simple Cocoa objects (NSArrays, NSDictionarys, NSStrings, NSDates and so on), for very easy integration with your code. Creating a TwitterEngine is as easy as instantiating it, setting your Twitter username and password, and you're done. See this blog post for more.
If you're an iPhone developer, you'll be pleased to know that MGTwitterEngine works on both Mac OS X Leopard and on iPhone/iPod Touch (with the official SDK from Apple).
Note: this code was written and tested on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), and the Xcode file requires Xcode 3.0. The code itself should be fine on Tiger too.
Note: this code requires Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or later.
Note: this project requires Xcode 2.4 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later, but should work on previous versions of Mac OS X if you include the files in your own project.
A simple category on NSView and an accompanying class which together allow you to add 'tracking areas' to your views. Tracking areas are like tracking rectangles but are more robust and effective, and can be configured to track the mouse either at all times, only when the view's app is active, only when the view's window is key, or only when the view is First Responder. You can also choose whether to use the view's visible rect in preference to the rect you pass in. See the example for details.
Fair warning: it uses a polling timer to do its thing, but in my tests it consumes very, very little CPU (0.1% in Activity Monitor), and it will only poll if there are actually some tracking areas set up.
Note: this project requires Xcode 2.4 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later, but if you want to just take the source files and create your own project, it should work right back to Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar).
An NSAnimation subclass which provides more desirable behaviour than NSViewAnimation itself in most circumstances; i.e. it animates the views' frames itself in the same thread, leading to visually synchronised movement. Try out the included sample app to see the difference between regular NSViewAnimations and these.
This is based on code by Todd Yandell - thanks, Todd!
Thanks to Joe Goh for a bug-fix which prevented animations from running unless at least one animation-dictionary had an effect specified.
Note: this project requires Xcode 2.1 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.
A category on NSColor which returns another NSColor for use when drawing label text on top of the receiver. Either white or black is returned, depending on which will have most visual contrast with the receiver's color. In the event of the receiver's colorspace not being converted to RGB, black is returned by default.
Note: this project requires Xcode 2.1 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.
A category on NSImage allowing you to obtain a resized version of the image to fit an arbitrary size, with a choice of cropping or scaling methods (crop center, crop start, crop end, or scale to fit). Uses high-quality interpolation too.
Here's a screenshot.
Note: this project requires Xcode 2.1 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.
Here's a screenshot.
Note: this project requires Xcode 2.1 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.
Here's a screenshot.
Note: this project requires Xcode 2.1 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.
Here's a screenshot.
Note: this project requires Xcode 2.1 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.
A simple application which reads iCal's calendars and returns an NSDictionary whose keys are the names of the calendars, and whose values are Calendar objects, with fields 'title' (NSString), 'notes' (NSString), 'color' (NSColor), and both GUID keys used by iCal to keep track of calendars and their source data.
Useful if you need a list of the user's iCal calendars with their names, descriptions and correct colors. This code parses the actual XML property list files which define the calendars; it doesn't use AppleScript, nor require launching iCal.
Note: this project requires Xcode 2.1 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.
A simple category on NSBezierPath allowing you stroke inside a path, rather than stroking centered on the path.
From an idea by Rainer Brockerhoff.
Here's a screenshot.
Note: this project requires Xcode and Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) or later.
Here's a screenshot.
Note: this project requires Xcode and Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) or later. Thanks to Heinrich Giesen for fixing the crasher.
Also includes code to draw colored checkboxes as in iCal, using any color you want!
Here's a screenshot.
Note: this project requires Xcode and Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) or later.
Shows how to make use of the Mac OS X 10.2 Address Book API. Includes a live-filtering field which locates Address Book entries by forename, surname or company, and demonstrates finding the primary email address for a specified person, as well as their name and picture.
Here's a screenshot (email address purposely obscured for the sake of Mike's privacy!)
Easily implement Find and Replace in your application. Adapted and improved from TextEdit's implementation. Includes both the class and a Nib file containing an appropriate Find panel. Read more about the improvements here.
Here's a screenshot.
Here's a screenshot.
Ever felt the need to have a window fade out of existence, instead of just closing? Here's how.
Shows how to implement grab-scrolling, like in Preview, Photoshop, Acrobat and more. Includes the two requisite hand-cursors.
Here's a screenshot.
Source for two apps, a client and a server, letting you send full-screen screenshots of your Mac via Rendezvous. This is a modification of Apple's Picture Sharing code.
Not really source code, but just as good! This is a collection of 'MainMenu.nib' files, with the menubars pre-localized into various languages. All items are connected to the proper actions, and several additional resources are included (such as flag graphics, ISO language tables, and more).
Currently, these languages are included: English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Catalan, Danish, Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Serbian, Japanese and Korean.
Here's a screenshot (this is the Italian nib).
Chill Cocoa Mac Os 11
Shows how to create proper snap-to-edge windows or palettes, which snap during the drag (as they should).
A class which gives you icon-buttons with pop-up menus. Configure all kinds of things like whether the menu appears when you click anywhere on the icon or just on the little pop-up arrow, whether the button shows the icon of the last-selected item (like in Photoshop's fly-out tool palette menus), and more.
Here's a screenshot.
Eric Wang's reimplementation of my PopUpImage class (see above), using a subclass of NSPopUpButton. In Eric's own words, the improvements include:
- Reuse of NSPopUpButton's menu-related methods.
- The class has been split into an NSControl/NSCell pair, allowing it to be used within NSTableView, NSMatrix, etc. The core functionality is implemented in a subclass of NSPopUpButtonCell.
- There are also some subtle interface-related improvements.
Ever wanted to find the name (or full path, or icon) of the user's default web brower or email client? Or perhaps their default FTP app, or newsreader? This source shows you how to find the user's chosen default application for any protocol you like.
Here's a screenshot.
A simple Cocoa application, showing how to launch URLs, use the standard About box with a scrolling field of credits, display alert panels, remember window positions, and more. Useful for developers who are new to Cocoa.
A little app which lets you type a file-extension (like 'doc' or 'html'), and have it show the icon for that file-type (the big, beautiful 128x128 pixels icon). Useful for display purposes.
Here's a screenshot.
Shows you how to choose a font with the standard Font Panel. This little app shows a text field with a font's name and size (like 'LucidaGrande 13'). You can click a button to bring up the Font Panel, and when you choose a new font the text field is updated with the new name and size. Useful if your app needs to choose a default font for something.
Shows how to put images into a table column. We're constantly asked how to do this.
Here's a screenshot.
A little window with a button that doesn't do anything.. unless you click it whilst holding the command, option and control keys. Shows how to detect that those keys are pressed. Useful in all kinds of situations for adding functionality without cluttering up your app's interface.
A cool little app that lets you draw multi-coloured circles and ovals. Oportunity to revenge mac os. Shows how to let the user draw shapes with the mouse, how to draw shapes with transparency, and how to let the user hold down the shift key to constrain a shape to be proportional. Just for fun!
Here's a screenshot.
One of my System Services. Source included.
A little Mac OS X application I made a few years ago to sync birthdays from Address Book to iCal, long before iCal was natively able to do that (as it is now). Source included.
Important
If you are using Python from a python.org64-bit/32-bit Python installer for Mac OS X 10.6 and later,you should only use IDLE or tkinter with an updatedthird-party Tcl/Tk 8.5, likeActiveTcl 8.5installed. The final mix effect episode 1 mac os.
If you are using OS X 10.9 Mavericks and a Python from a python.org64-bit/32-bit installer,application windows may not update properly due toa Tk problem.Installthe latest ActiveTcl 8.5.15.0 if possible.(Also, a critical OS X 10.9 problemthat could cause Python to crash when used interactively has been fixed asof the 3.4.0, 3.3.3, and 2.7.6 installers.)
If you are using Mac OS X 10.6, do not use IDLE or Tkinterfrom the Apple-supplied Python 2.6.1 in Mac OS X 10.6. If possible,install and use a newer version of Python and of Tcl/Tk.
Python's integrated development environment,IDLE, and thetkinter GUI toolkitit uses, depend on the Tk GUI toolkit which isnot part of Python itself. For best results, it is important that theproper release of Tcl/Tk is installed on your machine.For recent Python installers for Mac OS X downloadable from this website,here is a summary of current recommendations followed by more detailedinformation.
| PythonRelease | InstallerVariant | Mac OS XRelease | RecommendedTcl/Tk | AlternateTcl/Tk | NotRecommended |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.4.1,2.7.8 | 64-/32-bit | 10.9 | ActiveTcl8.5.15.0 | Apple8.5.9 | |
| 10.8 | ActiveTcl8.5.15.0 | Apple8.5.9 | |||
| 10.7 | ActiveTcl8.5.15.0 | Apple8.5.9 | |||
| 10.6 | ActiveTcl8.5.15.0 | Apple8.5.7 | |||
| 32-bit-only | 10.5 | ActiveTcl8.4.20 | Apple8.4.7 |
There are currently three major variants of Tk in common use on Mac OS X:
- Aqua Carbon Tk
- This has been the most common native version on Mac OS X.Because is is implemented with older Mac OS X Carbon interfaces, it isonly available as a 32-bit binary (usually for Intel and PowerPCprocessors). Aqua Carbon Tk 8.4 is included with Mac OS X releases 10.4through 10.9 and is also available from ActiveState. Aqua Carbon variantsof Tk 8.5 had been available as an ActiveState Community Download priorto ActiveTcl 8.5.9. As of 8.5.13, the Tk project no longer supportsCarbon builds of Tk 8.5.
- Aqua Cocoa Tk
- A newer native implementation availableas a universal 64-bit and 32-bit binary. This variant is the standard nativeOS X variant in Tk 8.6 and as of Tk 8.5.13. Aqua Cocoa support wasbackported to Tk 8.5 (prior to 8.5.13) and released by Apple starting with Mac OS X 10.6and by ActiveState starting with their 8.5.9.1 release. While the Pythoninstallers downloadable from this website do not support Aqua Cocoa Tk 8.6,other distributors of Python for Mac OS X may do so.
- X11 Tk
- The traditional platform-independent UNIX Tk implementation whichrequires an X11 server, such as the Apple X11.app available as anoptional component in all recent Mac OS X releases. 64-bit and32-bit binaries can be built. While the Python installers downloadablefrom this website do not support X11 Tk, other distributors ofPython for Mac OS X may do so.
ActiveTcl 8.5.15.0
ActiveState provides binary distributions of Tcl/Tk which are upward compatiblewith and generally more up-to-date than those provided by Apple in Mac OS Xreleases. This version of Tcl/Tk includes fixes for some critical problemsthat you may encounter using tkinter or IDLE (see Apple 8.5.9 below).Note that, while the ActiveState web site refers to 8.5.15.0,the installer dmg link has been updated to download ActiveTcl 8.5.15.1.The 8.5.15.1 update contains the fix for the OS X 10.9 Mavericks windowupdate problem.You can download an installer for this release fromthe ActiveState web site.Note that ActiveState Community Edition binaries are not open source andare covered by an ActiveState license. You should read the licensebefore downloading to verify that your usage complies with its terms of use.This is an Aqua Cocoa Tk.
Apple 8.5.9
This release is included in Mac OS X 10.9, 10.8, and 10.7. As of this writing,there are at least two known issues with Tk 8.5.9 thatare present in Apple 8.5.9 Tk but fixed in more recent upstream 8.5 releases.The more serious problem is an immediate crash in Tkwhen entering a composition character, like Option-u on a US keyboard.(This problem is documented asTk bug 2907388.)There is also the more general problem of input manager support for compositecharacters(Tk bug 3205153)which has also been fixed in more recent Tcl/Tk 8.5 releases.You can avoid these problems by using a current python.org installerthat links with ActiveTcl 8.5.15.0.This is an Aqua Cocoa Tk.
Apple 8.5.7
This release is included in Mac OS X 10.6. IDLE is known to hang or crashwhen used with the Apple 8.5.7 included in all versions of Mac OS X 10.6.x.Because of this,we strongly recommend that you do not attempt to use Tkinter or IDLE withthe Apple-supplied Python 2.6.1 in 10.6. Instead, install a newer version ofPython that supports a newer version of Tk.This is an Aqua Cocoa Tk.
ActiveTcl 8.4.20
ActiveState provides binary distributions of Tcl/Tk which are upward compatiblewith and generally more up-to-date than those provided by Apple in Mac OS Xreleases. You can download an installer for this release fromthe ActiveState web site.Note that ActiveState Community Edition binaries are not open source andare covered by an ActiveState license. You should read the licensebefore downloading to verify that your usage complies with its terms of use.This is an Aqua Carbon Tk.
Apple 8.4.19
This release is included in Mac OS X 10.9, 10.8, 10.7, and 10.6.This is an Aqua Carbon Tk.
Apple 8.4.7
This release is included in Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.4. This is an AquaCarbon Tk.
Note
While Tcl and Tk areseparate frameworks and libraries, they are closely related and arenormally installed or updated simultaneously. You should notattempt to mix-and-match Tcl and Tk versions. References toa specific version of Tk assume the corresponding version ofTcl is installed as well.
The Python for Mac OS X installers downloaded from this website dynamicallylink at runtime to Tcl/Tk Mac OS X frameworks. The Tcl/Tk major version isdetermined when the installer is created and cannot be overridden.The Python 64-bit/32-bit Mac OS X installers for Python 3.4.x, 3.3.x, 3.2.x,and 2.7.x dynamically link to Tcl/Tk 8.5 frameworks.32-bit-only Python installers for Mac OS X dynamically link to Tcl/Tk 8.4frameworks.
In either case, the dynamically linking occurs when tkinter (Python 3)or Tkinter (Python 2) is first imported (specifically, the internal_tkinter C extension module). By default, the Mac OS X dynamic linkerlooks first in /Library/Frameworks for Tcl and Tk frameworks withthe proper major version. This is the standard location for third-partyor built from source frameworks, including the ActiveTcl releases.If frameworks of the proper major version are not found there,the dynamic linker looks for the same version in/System/Library/Frameworks, the location for Apple-suppliedframeworks shipped with Mac OS X. (Note, you should normally not modifyor delete files in /System/Library.)
As is common on Mac OS X, the installed Pythons and the Tcl and Tkframeworks are built to run on multiple CPU architectures (universalbinaries) and across multiple Mac OS X levels (minimum deploymenttarget). For Python to be able to dynamically link with a particularTcl and Tk version, the available architectures in the Tcl/Tk frameworksmust include the architecture that Python is running in and theirminimum deployment target should be no greater than that of Python.The 64-bit/32-bit Mac OS X installers for Python 3.4.x, 3.3.x, 3.2.x,and 2.7.x are built with Intel-64 (x86_64) and Intel-32 (i386)architectures and a minimum deployment target of Mac OS X 10.6. TheApple 8.5.9 and ActiveTcl 8.5.15.0 releases discussed below are compatiblewith these installers. The 32-bit-only Python installers for Mac OS Xfrom this web site are built with Intel-32 (i386) and PowerPC-32 (ppc)architectures and are compatible with all current releases of Apple 8.4.x andActiveTcl 8.4.x. Starting with Python 3.3.0, the minimum deployment targetfor 32-bit-only installers is Mac OS X 10.5; for earlier releases, it wasMac OS X 10.3.9.
- 2014-07-01 - updated for 2.7.8
- 2014-06-01 - updated for 2.7.7; removed 2.7.6 and 3.3.5
- 2014-05-18 - updated for 3.4.1 and 2.7.7rc1
- 2014-03-16 - updated for 3.4.0 and 3.3.5
- 2014-02-10 - updated for 3.3.4 and 3.4.0rc1
- 2014-01-05 - updated for 3.4.0b2
- 2013-11-24 - clarify that the ActiveState website still refers to 8.5.15.0
- 2013-11-24 - removed built-in for 3.4.0b1, removed 3.3.2 and 2.7.5
- 2013-11-10 - ActiveTcl 8.5.15.1; removed built-in for 3.3.3rc2 and 2.7.6.
- 2013-10-27 - updated for 3.3.3rc1 and 2.7.6rc1 and their built-in 8.5.15.
- 2013-10-24 - updated for OS X 10.9 and ActiveTcl 8.5.15, removed 3.2.5.
- 2013-10-20 - updated for 3.4.0a4 and its built-in 8.5.15.
- 2013-09-29 - updated for 3.4.0a3
- 2013-09-09 - updated for 3.4.0a2 and its built-in 8.5.14.
- 2013-08-03 - updated for 3.4.0a1 and ActiveTcl 8.4.20
- 2013-05-18 - updated for ActiveTcl 8.5.14
- 2013-05-15 - updated for 3.3.2, 2.7.5, and 3.2.5
- 2013-04-06 - updated for 3.3.1, 2.7.4, and 3.2.4
- 2012-12-26 - updated for ActiveTcl 8.5.13 and Issue 15853 patch installer
- 2012-09-29 - updated for 3.3.0 final and reverted to ActiveTcl 8.5.11.1
- 2012-08-02 - updated for ActiveTcl 8.5.12
- 2012-07-28 - updated for OS X 10.8
- 2012-04-11 - updated for 3.2.3 final and 2.7.3 final
- 2012-03-18 - updated for 3.2.3rc2 and 2.7.3rc2
- 2012-03-04 - updated for ActiveTcl 8.5.11.1, 3.2.3rc1, 2.7.3rc1, removed 3.1.4
- 2011-11-12 - updated for ActiveTcl 8.5.11
- 2011-09-04 - updated for 3.2.2 final
- 2011-07-21 - updated for OS X 10.7 and ActiveTcl 8.5.10.1
- 2011-07-09 - updated for 3.2.1 final and ActiveTcl 8.5.10
- 2011-06-12 - updated for 2.7.2 final and 3.1.4 final
- 2011-05-30 - updated for 3.2.1rc, 2.7.2rc, and 3.1.4rc
- 2011-03-08 - add warnings and include details on how Python links with Tcl/Tk releases
- 2011-02-20 - updated for 3.2 final
- 2011-01-31 draft 1 - preliminary info for 3.2rc2
- 2011-01-14 draft 0
