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Asked: 2026-05-26T23:27:28+00:00

I’ve been attempting to create a Cocoa (desktop) application without using NIBs or XIBs,

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I’ve been attempting to create a Cocoa (desktop) application without using NIBs or XIBs, following the instructions here. All is well, and from Terminal.app I can successfully run the application. However it’s spawned without any of the usual decorations, such as a menu bar or a dock icon, behind the terminal window and seemingly attached very much to the terminal process.

I suspected that this might be a consequence of running the binary itself directly from the command line, but playing around a bit I found that at least Calculator.app is more than happy to spawn a “real” application when called using:

$ /Applications/Calculator.app/Contents/MacOS/Calculator

What am I missing, if anything, here? I have also tried loading a XIB file via

NSNib *mainNib = [[NSNib alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:[[NSURL URLWithString:@"../MainMenu.xib"] absoluteURL]];
[NSNib instantiateNibWithOwner:application topLevelObjects:nil];

which seems to find the XIB, but makes no difference (i.e. the GUI isn’t fully loaded).

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    After a bit of fiddling, I found the solution to the issue. Transforming the process type via TransformProcessType and then using the accurately-named [NSApp activateIgnoringOtherApps:YES] did the trick:

    ProcessSerialNumber psn = { 0, kCurrentProcess }; 
OSStatus returnCode = TransformProcessType(& psn, kProcessTransformToForegroundApplication);

[NSApp activateIgnoringOtherApps:YES];

    (I also added a custom menu to finish it off). Thanks to Mankarse for the pointers!

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