How do I open another window in macOS in Swift with Cocoa

Question

I am working on a macOS app that presents a list of customer master records in a table view. Double-clicking a row in the table view should open a new window where the user

Answer 1

The Window Programming Guide is a great place to understand how windows are managed in general.

Specifically (assuming you know how to present a window controller scene in storyboards), you need somewhere to store references to the new window controllers so they’re not immediately deallocated (and disappear) when presented.

In your case, you may want to keep an array of your open detail windows in the master window controller, so that if the master goes away, the details do as well. When a detail window is open (a controller instance is created and its window shown), you’ll store its controller in the array; when closed, you remove its controller from the array so it’s deallocated.

There are a number of ways to do this, depending on how much control you want, how you want child window ownership to work, etc., but this basic pattern is usually sufficient.

To instantiate a new window controller scene from a storyboard:

var myWindowController = NSStoryboard(name: "MyStoryboardFileName", bundle: nil)?.instantiateControllerWithIdentifier("MyWindowControllerIdentifier") as MyWindowControllerClass
myWindowController?.showWindow(self)