How to Disable a Button of a Nstoolbar of Macos X in Swift

How to disable a button of a NSToolbar of macOS X in Swift?

Implement the delegate method

override func validateToolbarItem(_ item: NSToolbarItem) -> Bool

You can distinguish the items for example by the itemIdentifier and return true to enable and false to disable the item

The documentation provides an example.

how to enable/disable NSToolbarItem

Implement NSToolbarItemValidation Protocol in your window, view or document controller. The documentation gives the following sample code:

-(BOOL)validateToolbarItem:(NSToolbarItem *)toolbarItem {

    BOOL enable = NO;
    if ([[toolbarItem itemIdentifier] isEqual:SaveDocToolbarItemIdentifier]) {

        // We will return YES (enable the save item)
        // only when the document is dirty and needs saving
        enable = [self isDocumentEdited];

    } else if ([[toolbarItem itemIdentifier] isEqual:NSToolbarPrintItemIdentifier]) {

        // always enable print for this window
        enable = YES;
    }
    return enable;
}

You can also use action or tag to determine what toolbar item is being validated. Items are validated frequently, whenever your app is activated or events are dispatched, so they will always be in a valid state.

How can I hide an NSToolbarItem using code?

If disabling them is not enough you could remove the items.

[myToolbar removeItemAtIndex:itemIndex];

Then when you need to put them back, just re-insert them:

[myToolbar insertItemWithItemIdentifier:itemIdentifier atIndex:itemIndex];

Look at Adding and Removing Toolbar Items in the Apple docs.

How to implement validateToolbarItem(_:)?

    enum toolItems:Int {
        case undo = 0
        case redo = 1
    }

    // creating an array at the beginning (AppleDelegate, windowDidLoad, ...) //
    func makeToolbar() {
        toolbarItemState.insert("1", at: toolItems.undo.rawValue) // 0
        toolbarItemState.insert("0", at: toolItems.redo.rawValue) // 1
    }

    override func validateToolbarItem(_ toolbarItem:NSToolbarItem) -> Bool {
        var enable:Bool = false
        if ((toolbarItemState[toolbarItem.tag] as AnyObject).integerValue == 1) {
            enable = true
        }
        return enable
    }

    func editToolItem(index:Int,state:String) -> Void {
        toolbarItemState.replaceObject(at: index, with: state)
    }

When the application launches, create an array of toolbarItemState. If you want to change the state of the undo toolbar item to 'on,' for example,

editToolItem(index: toolItems.savePict.undo, state: "1")

. Now, the undo toolbar item is one. If you set the state to "0," the button will be disabled.

NSToolbar in Xcode 7 using Storyboards (NSWindowController - NSSplitViewController)

OK, I've created this question quite a few days ago and no answer so far so I've answer with what I recently did to overcome the problem.

After I created my Xcode project I did this:

• Created a subclass MySplitViewController for the NSSplitViewController

• Added an IBOutlet for each NSSplitViewItem. For example:

  @IBOutlet weak var mySplitViewItem: NSSplitViewItem!

• Created a subclass WindowController for the NSWindowController

• Added an IBAction in the WindowController class that links to the NSToolbarItem (my button)

• Added a property that gets the Window Controller's content as MySplitViewController

  var mySplitViewController: MySplitViewController {
  return self.window?.contentViewController as! MySplitViewController
  }

• Now I can access the split view controller's property from the Window Controller in the action I created:

  mySplitViewController. mySplitViewItem.collapsed = true

I created some sample code that does this (but using a view controller and changing the text for a label here, just in case someone wants to see a working project with this behaviour. And a blog post about it too :)

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