NSPopover transiency when popover is in status bar

Question

I'm making an app which lives in status bar. When status item is clicked, NSPopover pops up.

It looks like this:

Here's the problem: I want it to be "transient", that is if I click anywhere outside of the popover, it will close. And while NSPopoverBehaviorTransient works fine when popover is in a window, it doesn't work when it's in status bar.

How can I implement such behavior myself?

Answer 1

It turned out to be easy:

- (IBAction)openPopover:(id)sender
{
    // (open popover)

    if(popoverTransiencyMonitor == nil)
    {
        popoverTransiencyMonitor = [NSEvent addGlobalMonitorForEventsMatchingMask:NSLeftMouseDownMask|NSRightMouseDownMask handler:^(NSEvent* event)
                                    {
                                        [self closePopover:sender];
                                    }];
    }
}

- (IBAction)closePopover:(id)sender
{
    if(popoverTransiencyMonitor)
    {
        [NSEvent removeMonitor:popoverTransiencyMonitor];

        popoverTransiencyMonitor = nil;
    }

    // (close popover)
}

What wasn't easy, though, is that there are nasty issues with having a popover pop out of NSStatusItem (it didn't behave as desired when Mission Control was invoked or space switched to a full-screen window). I had to implement a custom window that always floats above the NSStatusItem and deals with switching to a full-screen window etc. It seemed easy, but clearly status items weren't designed for something like that ;)

Answer 2

The approach that I use is similar to the above answer except I have everything combined into one method instead of using two separate IBActions.

First, I declare the following properties

@property (strong, nonatomic) NSStatusItem *statusItem;
@property (strong, nonatomic) NSEvent *popoverTransiencyMonitor;
@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet NSPopover *popover;
@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet NSView *popoverView;

then in awakeFromNib I set up the status bar item

- (void)awakeFromNib {

    self.statusItem = [[NSStatusBar systemStatusBar] statusItemWithLength:NSVariableStatusItemLength];

    self.statusItem.title = @"Title";
    self.statusItem.highlightMode = YES;
    self.statusItem.action = @selector(itemClicked:);
}

followed by the method that is called when the status bar item is clicked

- (void)itemClicked:(id)sender {

    [[self popover] showRelativeToRect:[sender bounds] ofView:sender preferredEdge:NSMinYEdge];

    if (self.popoverTransiencyMonitor == nil) {
        self.popoverTransiencyMonitor = [NSEvent addGlobalMonitorForEventsMatchingMask:(NSLeftMouseDownMask | NSRightMouseDownMask | NSKeyUpMask) handler:^(NSEvent* event) {
            [NSEvent removeMonitor:self.popoverTransiencyMonitor];
            self.popoverTransiencyMonitor = nil;
            [self.popover close];
        }];
    }
}

which makes the popover appear and also close when the user clicks outside the view.

Note that in Interface Builder you must set the behavior of the popover to Transient so the popover will close when the user clicks the status item.