How to add animated icon to OS X status bar?

Question

I want to put an icon in Mac OS status bar as part of my cocoa application. What I do right now is:

NSStatusBar *bar = [NSStatusBar systemStatusBar];

sbItem =          


        

Answer 1

I re-wrote Rob's solution so that I can reuse it:

I have number of frames 9 and all the images name has last digit as frame number so that I can reset the image each time to animate the icon.

//IntervalAnimator.h

    #import 

@protocol IntervalAnimatorDelegate 

- (void)onUpdate;

@end


@interface IntervalAnimator : NSObject
{
    NSInteger numberOfFrames;
    NSInteger currentFrame;
    __unsafe_unretained id  delegate;
}

@property(assign) id  delegate;
@property (nonatomic) NSInteger numberOfFrames;
@property (nonatomic) NSInteger currentFrame;

- (void)startAnimating;
- (void)stopAnimating;
@end

#import "IntervalAnimator.h"

@interface IntervalAnimator()
{
    NSTimer* animTimer;
}

@end

@implementation IntervalAnimator
@synthesize numberOfFrames;
@synthesize delegate;
@synthesize currentFrame;

- (void)startAnimating
{
    currentFrame = -1;
    animTimer = [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:0.50 target:delegate selector:@selector(onUpdate) userInfo:nil repeats:YES];
}

- (void)stopAnimating
{
    [animTimer invalidate];
}

@end

How to use:

1. Conform to protocol in your StatusMenu class

   //create IntervalAnimator object
   
   animator = [[IntervalAnimator alloc] init];
   
   [animator setDelegate:self];
   
   [animator setNumberOfFrames:9];
   
   [animator startAnimating];
   

2. Implement protocol method

   -(void)onUpdate    {
   
       [animator setCurrentFrame:([animator currentFrame] + 1)%[animator numberOfFrames]];
   
       NSImage* image = [NSImage imageNamed:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"icon%ld", (long)[animator currentFrame]]];
   
       [statusItem setImage:image];
   
   }