NicerTouchBar

NicerTouchBar includes useful utilities for NSTouchBar/NSTouchBarItem validation, as well as some convenience methods for influencing NSTouchBar behavior/setup.

While we have NSMenuItemValidation and NSUserInterfaceValidations, as of 10.15, NSTouchBar doesn't have a good validation system. This library introduces a TouchBarItemValidations protocol, which is checked first during the touch bar validation process. As a fallback, NSUserInterfaceValidations is checked if appropriate.

public protocol TouchBarItemValidations {
    @available(OSX 10.12.2, *)
    func validateTouchBarItem(_ item: NSTouchBarItem) -> Bool
}

Validation is NSTouchBarItem-subclass dependent. Currently, NSGroupTouchBarItem and NSPopoverTouchBarItem are supported. NSCustomTouchBarItem is supported if its view property is a subclass of NSControl.

Because this validation isn't provided by the system, you have to do some work to wire it up. You can just use the validate method on NSTouchBar directly. This is manual, but can be efficient, especially if your validation needs are simple.

A fancier way is to hook into NSWindow/NSApplication's didUpdateNotification. This gives you a easy way to run your validation automatically as the window/app processes events.

And, as a convenience, there are a few functions/extensions that make it easier to manually validate.

class MyViewController: NSViewController {
    func myFunction() {
        // this can be called safely before 10.12.2
        validateTouchBar()
        // or (cannot be called before 10.12.2)
        touchbar?.validate()
    }
}

It sometimes happens that you need to override a window's default touch bar. Instead of messing with binding, you can use a handy extension on NSViewController.

deinit {
    restoreParentWindowTouchBar()
}

override func viewWillAppear() {
    super.viewWillAppear()

    becomeParentWindowTouchBarProvider()
}

dependencies: [
    .package(url: "https://github.com/ChimeHQ/NicerTouchBar")
]

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