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

I happened to stumble upon this problem while designing a custom control to be used within a table view.

It seems that at least in recent versions of Mac OS X, you can send the table inside your Popover (or whatever focus-stealing view you've got there) a tableView.refusesFirstResponder = true.

The popover will no longer attempt to steal first responder if you do this.

Answer 2

I adapted Will's answer for Swift:

protocol PopoverFirstResponderStealingSuppression {
    var suppressFirstResponderWhenPopoverShows: Bool { get }
}

class TTWindow: NSWindow {
    override func makeFirstResponder(_ responder: NSResponder?) -> Bool {
        if responder != firstResponder, let responderView = responder as? NSView {
            // Prevent popover content view from forcing our current first responder to resign

            let newFirstResponderWindow = responderView.window!
            var currentFirstResponderWindow: NSWindow? = nil

            let currentFirstResponder = firstResponder
            if let currentFirstResponder = currentFirstResponder as? NSWindow {
                currentFirstResponderWindow = currentFirstResponder
            }
            else if let currentFirstResponder = currentFirstResponder as? NSView {
                currentFirstResponderWindow = 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, currentEvent?.window != newFirstResponderWindow {

                var currentView: NSView? = responderView
                while currentView != nil {
                    if let currentView = currentView as? PopoverFirstResponderStealingSuppression, currentView.suppressFirstResponderWhenPopoverShows {
                        return false
                    }

                    currentView = currentView?.superview
                }
            }
        }

        return super.makeFirstResponder(responder)
    }
}

Answer 3

Make a subclass of your popover content (a text view?) and implement -(void)canBecomeKeyView. Return NO there. It's called only once when the popover is shown, so you can still interact with it, but it doesn't steal the first responder status anymore.

Answer 4

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 <LIPopoverFirstResponderStealingSuppression>)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 <NSObject>
@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.