Easily display images, animations, badges and alerts to your macOS application's dock icon

by iOS Example

DSFDockTile

Easily display images, animations, badges and alerts to your macOS application’s dock icon.

Why?

I was inspired by Neil Sardesai after he posted this on Twitter. And this marvellous follow-up tweet by Norbert M. Doerner.

While the NSDockTile API isn’t overly complex, I wanted something that made it easy to change the dock image, and even add basic animations from GIF images etc.

Features

  • Set the badge label
  • Display an image
  • Display an animated image
  • Display the content of an NSView
  • Bounce the docktile

By default a DSFDockTile instance operates on the Application’s docktile. You can provide your own NSDockTile for any window (by calling window.dockTile) via the init functions on the badge generators.

DockTile plugins

Did you know that your application can show a custom DockTile image even when it’s not running? Apple provides an NSDockTilePlugin prodocol that allows you to do exactly that. Want to provide different application icons for dark and light modes? NSDockTilePlugin allows you to! Want to tweak the dock icon when your application isn’t running, but needs attention? NSDockTilePlugin!

There is a demo application in the Demos folder called ‘DSFDockTile Plugin Demo’ (macOS 11+) that demonstrates using NSDockTilePlugin and DSFDockIcon in SwiftUI.

Integration

Swift package manager

Add https://github.com/dagronf/DSFDockTile to your project.

If you don’t want to include the DSFImageFlipbook package, copy all the files in the Sources/ folder EXCEPT for DSFDockTile+Animation.swift.

Demo

There is a demo macOS application available in the Demos subfolder.

Badge Label

It’s very easy to add a badge label to a docktile.

// Set the label on the docktile to 1234
DSFDockTile.badgeLabel = "1234"

// Remove the badge label from the docktile
DSFDockTile.badgeLabel = nil

DockTile Generators

AppIcon

Set the docktile to the application’s icon.

// Set the dock icon to the application icon
DSFDockTile.AppIcon.display()

Constant Image

This is a DSFDockTile object that displays a single image. Useful for if you have a set of images to display in the docktile that do not change and you want to the constantness.

static let LockedImage   = NSImage(named: NSImage.Name("padlock-locked"))!
static let UnlockedImage = NSImage(named: NSImage.Name("padlock-unlocked"))!

let LockedDockTileImage = DSFDockTile.ConstantImage(LockedImage)
let UnlockedDockTileImage = DSFDockTile.ConstantImage(UnlockedImage)
...

if application.isEditable {
   UnlockedDockTileImage.display()
}
else {
   LockedDockTileImage.display()
}

Image

This is a DSFDockTile object that can display images.

static let LockedImage   = NSImage(named: NSImage.Name("padlock-locked"))!
static let UnlockedImage = NSImage(named: NSImage.Name("padlock-unlocked"))!

let stateDockTile = DSFDockTile.Image()

...

func viewDidLoad() {
   let image = application.isEditable ? UnlockedImage : LockedImage
   stateDockTile.display(image)
}

View

This is a DSFDockTile object that can display the content of a view managed by a view controller

Due to NSDockTile restrictions, the view is not drawn live into the dock as the view is updated. You must call display() to update the dock tile with the view’s current content whenever a change occurs in the view.

/// The view controller to display on the docktile
let dockViewController = DockViewController()

/// The docktile instance handling the docktile
lazy var updateDockTile: DSFDockTile.View = {
   dockViewController.loadView()
   return DSFDockTile.View(dockViewController)
}()
...
func doUpdate() {
   // Change the color of the item in the 
   self.dockViewController.foregroundColor = .systemYellow

   // NSDockTile does not update automatically so need to tell it when changes are made
   self.updateDockTile.display()
}

Animation

This is a docktile that can display an animation. It uses DSFImageFlipbook under the seams to handle the animation itself.

let animatedDockTile: DSFDockTile.Animated = {
   let fb = DSFImageFlipbook()
   let da = NSDataAsset(name: NSDataAsset.Name("animated-gif"))!
   _ = fb.loadFrames(from: da.data)
   return DSFDockTile.Animated(fb)
}()

...

@IBAction func startAnimating(_ sender: Any) {
   animatedDockTile.startAnimating()
}

@IBAction func stopAnimating(_ sender: Any) {
   animatedDockTile.stopAnimating()
}

Attention Concepts

You can request user information via the DockTile of an application if your application is not the front-most application.

See Apple’s Documentation for more details.

requestInformationalAttention()

Request that the docktile ‘bounce’ to inform the user of something informational. The function returns an object which you can use to cancel the attention request.

let cancellable = DSFDockTile.requestInformationalAttention()

The cancellable can be used to cancel the information request.

See Apple’s Documentation

requestCriticalAttention()

Request that the docktile ‘bounce’ to inform the user of something informational. The function returns an object which you can use to cancel the attention request.

let cancellable = DSFDockTile.requestCriticalAttention()

The cancellable can be used to cancel the critical request.

See Apple’s Documentation

Cancellation protocol (DSFDockTileUserAttentionCancellation)

The user attention methods return an object that conforms to DSFDockTileUserAttentionCancellation that can be used to cancel an attention request.

See Apple’s Documentation

Thanks

License

MIT. Use it and abuse it for anything you want, just attribute my work. Let me know if you do use it somewhere, I’d love to hear about it!

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2021 Darren Ford

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

GitHub

https://github.com/dagronf/DSFDockTile