Home/ Questions/Q 319527
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-12T08:40:10+00:00

I’m looking for a guide or sample code for writing Mac OS X Finder

  • 0

I’m looking for a guide or sample code for writing Mac OS X Finder plugins? It would like to know how to do some simple actions:

  1. adding image overlayers to icons
  2. adding context menu items
  3. listen to file changes

I found the following two resources:

I am tempted to review the SCPlugin code, but was hoping to find an easier sample to digest.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Sadly, programming a Finder plugin actually does still require getting your hands dirty with COM. If you look at the SCFinderPlugin subproject of the SCPlugin project, you will find that it follows exactly the same techniques outlined in your first link, including setting up a vtable for COM, writing AddRef/ReleaseRef functions, and so on. Writing a plugin, where you’re simultaneously managing old-school Carbon memory management, COM-style memory management, and Cocoa/new-style Carbon memory management, can be an incredible pain—and that totally ignores the fact that you’ll be interacting in three or more radically different APIs, with different naming conventions and calling semantics. Calling the situation hysterically poor would be a vast understatement.

    On the bright side, the Finder in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has been fully rewritten in Cocoa–and with that come vastly superior plugin interfaces. If you are lucky enough to be in a situation where you can actually only target Snow Leopard, you probably should grab an ADC Premier or higher membership, download the prerelease builds, and code against that. Besides, your plugin may not work on 10.6 anyway without a Cocoa rewrite, so it might make good sense to take a look at Snow Leopard before it gets released, regardless.

    • 0