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Unfortunately, I haven't found anything useful on the Internet - I wanted to know, what code I actually have to type for initializing an application without using storyboard or XIB files in Swift. I know I have to have a .swift file called main. But I don't know what to write in there (like do I need autoreleasepool or something like that?). For example, what would I do for initializing an NSMenu and how would I add a NSViewController to the active window (iOS's similar .rootViewController doesn't help). Thanks for any help ;)

Edit: I actually don't want to use @NSApplicationMain in front of the AppDelegate. I'd rather know what exactly happens there and then do it myself.

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  • I'm not sure why would you ever want to avoid @NSApplicationMain, but this question sure does have good educational value behind the scenes! Commented Apr 12, 2019 at 23:05

4 Answers 4

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35

if you don't want to have the @NSApplicationMain attribute, do:

  1. have a file main.swift

  2. add following top-level code:

     import Cocoa

 let delegate = AppDelegate() //alloc main app's delegate class
 NSApplication.shared.delegate = delegate //set as app's delegate
 NSApplicationMain(CommandLine.argc, CommandLine.unsafeArgv) //start of run loop       

 // Old versions:
 //  NSApplicationMain(C_ARGC, C_ARGV)
 //  NSApplicationMain(Process.argc, Process.unsafeArgv);

the rest should be inside your app delegate. e.g.:

import Cocoa

class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate {
    var newWindow: NSWindow?
    var controller: ViewController?
    
    func applicationDidFinishLaunching(aNotification: NSNotification) {
        newWindow = NSWindow(contentRect: NSMakeRect(10, 10, 300, 300), styleMask: .resizable, backing: .buffered, defer: false)
        
        controller = ViewController()
        let content = newWindow!.contentView! as NSView
        let view = controller!.view
        content.addSubview(view)
        
        newWindow!.makeKeyAndOrderFront(nil)
    }
}

then you have a viewController

import Cocoa

class ViewController : NSViewController {
    override func loadView() {
        let view = NSView(frame: NSMakeRect(0,0,100,100))
        view.wantsLayer = true
        view.layer?.borderWidth = 2
        view.layer?.borderColor = NSColor.red.cgColor
        self.view = view
    }
}
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9 Comments

How would I then display several view controllers on the window? Or should I use different windows hiding and showing when they are needed? Or is there even another effort to do this?
I agree with leonardo that for more complex stuff you should use xibs -- I don't quite often but if you're stuck on this level, I would do so
sorry this isn't 'write all my code for me' - your question was 100% answered and you can ask either different specific questions or (better maybe) try some tutorials
It's func applicationDidFinishLaunching(_ notification: Notification) in Swift 3.1. Pure copy and paste led to some confusion on my part.
When I try this with Xcode 9 the app terminates complaining that it cannot find a xib file. Where do I tell NSApplication not to use a xib file?
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18

The top level code sample above no longer works in recent versions of Xcode. Instead use this:

import Cocoa

let delegate = AppDelegate() //alloc main app's delegate class
NSApplication.shared().delegate = delegate //set as app's delegate

let ret = NSApplicationMain(CommandLine.argc, CommandLine.unsafeArgv)
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3 Comments

No longer works in Swift 4. I spent hours and still no luck programmatically create a window with pure swift. Apple makes is so hard to do it (\read no official getting started guide without storyboard )
@Kun Have you found a solution for this?
@BohdanSavych I did, shared is now a computed property, so drop the parentheses after that.
10

In Swift 4 it has changed slightly yet again,

The main file must have

import Cocoa

let delegate = AppDelegate()
NSApplication.shared.delegate = delegate

NSApplicationMain(CommandLine.argc, CommandLine.unsafeArgv)

The AppDelegate must be

import Cocoa


class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate {
    var newWindow: NSWindow?
    var controller: ViewController?

    func applicationDidFinishLaunching(_ aNotification: Notification) {
        newWindow = NSWindow(contentRect: NSMakeRect(10, 10, 300, 300), styleMask: .resizable, backing: .buffered, defer: false)

        controller = ViewController()
        let content = newWindow!.contentView! as NSView
        let view = controller!.view
        content.addSubview(view)

        newWindow!.makeKeyAndOrderFront(nil)
    }
}

The view controller is the same

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1 Comment

For anyone like me looking to make window showing title frame window = NSWindow(contentRect: winSize, styleMask: [.miniaturizable, .closable, .resizable, .titled], backing: .buffered, defer: false)
1

I'm on Swift 5, and although my app works with the code from Noskcaj's answer, I see a bunch of [Nib Loading] Failed to connect... errors from existing nib files. I fixed it by using this in my main.swift instead:

import Cocoa

autoreleasepool {
 let delegate = AppDelegate()
 // NSApplication delegate is a weak reference,
 // so we have to make sure it's not deallocated.
 withExtendedLifetime(delegate, {
     let application = NSApplication.shared
     application.delegate = delegate
     application.run()
     application.delegate = nil
 })
}

Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/a/54239088

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