Force NSPopover to not become first responder with NSTokenField

Question

I\'m having a NSTokenField and I\'m providing a custom autocompletion inside the popover. Unfortunately as soon as the popover is shown it forces the NSTokenField to resign firs

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there’s no clean way to do this. Luckily, though, I’ve done it the ugly way in Delicious Library 3—you need to put this method in a subclass of NSWindow, and make sure the document window in question is that subclass:

- (BOOL)makeFirstResponder:(NSResponder *)responder;
{
    // Prevent popover content view from forcing our current first responder to resign
    if (responder != self.firstResponder && [responder isKindOfClass:[NSView class]]) {
        NSWindow *const newFirstResponderWindow = ((NSView *)responder).window;
        NSWindow *currentFirstResponderWindow;

        NSResponder *const currentFirstResponder = self.firstResponder;
        if ([currentFirstResponder isKindOfClass:[NSWindow class]])
            currentFirstResponderWindow = (id)currentFirstResponder;
        else if ([currentFirstResponder isKindOfClass:[NSView class]])
            currentFirstResponderWindow = ((NSView *)currentFirstResponder).window;

        // Prevent some view in popover from stealing our first responder, but allow the user to explicitly activate it with a click on the popover.
        // Note that the current first responder may be in a child window, if it's a control in the "thick titlebar" area and we're currently full-screen.
        if (newFirstResponderWindow != self && newFirstResponderWindow != currentFirstResponderWindow && self.currentEvent.window != newFirstResponderWindow)
            for (NSView *responderView = (id)responder; responderView; responderView = responderView.superview)
                if ([responderView conformsToProtocol:@protocol(LIPopoverFirstResponderStealingSuppression)] &&
                    ((id )responderView).suppressFirstResponderWhenPopoverShows)
                    return NO;
    }

    return [super makeFirstResponder:responder];
}

Now make sure the popover’s content view subclass implements this protocol:

// NSPopover doesn't respect -acceptsFirstResponder of its content view (Radar 10666891).
@protocol LIPopoverFirstResponderStealingSuppression 
@property (readonly, nonatomic) BOOL suppressFirstResponderWhenPopoverShows;
@end

Please also file a bug with Apple to request NSPopover respect -acceptsFirstResponder of its content view; it is 100% the case that when multiple developers file bugs they get fixed.