How to make an OS X menubar in JavaFX

Question

I'm unable to make a JavaFX MenuBar show as a standard OS X menu bar, at the top of the screen.

Here's what I've tried in my subclass of Application:

public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
    final Menu menu1 = new Menu("File");
    final Menu menu2 = new Menu("Options");
    final Menu menu3 = new Menu("Help");

    MenuBar menuBar = new MenuBar();
    menuBar.getMenus().addAll(menu1, menu2, menu3);
    menuBar.setUseSystemMenuBar(true);

    primaryStage.setTitle("Creating Menus with JavaFX 2.0");
    final Group rootGroup = new Group();
    final Scene scene = new Scene(rootGroup, 800, 400, Color.WHEAT);


    rootGroup.getChildren().add(menuBar);
    primaryStage.setScene(scene);
    primaryStage.show();
}

I assumed that the use of

menuBar.setUseSystemMenuBar(true);

would do the trick, but actually it makes the menuBar disappear altogether.

I'm using Java 1.8.0-b132 on OS X 10.9

Anyone knows if there is a way to specify the `setUseSystemsMenuBar()` from fxml? — Heiko Rupp, Apr 18 '16 at 07:29

score 24 · Answer 1 · edited May 13 '18 at 23:03

24

I've had success with this code:

MenuBar menuBar = new MenuBar();
final String os = System.getProperty("os.name");
if (os != null && os.startsWith("Mac"))
  menuBar.useSystemMenuBarProperty().set(true);

BorderPane borderPane = new BorderPane();
borderPane.setTop(menuBar);

primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(borderPane));

edited May 13 '18 at 23:03

Ky -

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answered Mar 05 '15 at 09:18

dmolony

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score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 22 '14 at 13:58

9

It looks like OS X only displays the Menus if they have MenuItems inside them (which is a bit weird, as you can attach functionality to empty Menus).

answered Mar 22 '14 at 13:58

James_D

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Jan Gassen · Answer 3 · 2016-02-26T10:20:01.463

7

I created a little project that gives you access to the auto-generated menu bar on OS X: NSMenuFX

Update: With the new pure JavaFX version, the API has slightly changed

It allows you to replace the default Mac OS menu bar items, so you can to something like this:

// Get the toolkit
MenuToolkit tk = MenuToolkit.toolkit();

// Create default application menu with app name "test"
Menu defaultApplicationMenu = tk.createDefaultApplicationMenu("test");

// Replace the autogenerated application menu
tk.setApplicationMenu(defaultApplicationMenu);

// Since we now have a reference to the menu, we can rename items
defaultApplicationMenu.getItems().get(1).setText("Hide all the otters");

You can of course also add new menu items as you do in your example above.

edited Feb 26 '16 at 10:20

answered Apr 14 '15 at 11:23

Jan Gassen

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Works nicely but the remark about -XstartOnFirstThread is important because otherwise you won't get it running from inside Eclipse. – mipa Apr 14 '15 at 15:02
It looks like your API has changed in the "pure JavaFX" version -- maybe update the answer? – David Moles Feb 25 '16 at 20:12
1

Thanks for reminding me, the sample code has been updated. You also don't need to care about `-XstartOnFirstThread` anymore. – Jan Gassen Feb 26 '16 at 10:21

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 21 '16 at 23:07

3

I just ran into this issue myself - I noticed that the system menubar wouldn't initially appear in OSX until I switched to another application and back.

Wrapping the setUseSystemMenuBar call in a runLater did the trick, so I unscientifically concluded there's more window setup required before OSX can successfully register an application menu.

Platform.runLater(() -> menuBar.setUseSystemMenuBar(true));

answered Sep 21 '16 at 23:07

BenM

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Did you have any more insight into this? I have a slightly different issue -- when I set useSystemMenuBar to true either programmatically in Java, or from the FXML file, I get the menu bar on the top of the Mac screen, except it doesn't work. I click anywhere in the menu bar and nothing happens. If I switch to another application and then back to my application, it starts working. I tried enclosing the call inside a runLater from my Application.start() method, but same thing. Maybe I'll ask this: where are you calling Platform.runLater() from that it works for you? – Peter Hollemans Dec 06 '19 at 05:34
The topic is a bit old, but currently I stumbled over the same problem. Unfortunately the suggested solutions do not work. I also work NSMenuFX, I tried with and without app menu. I tried setting menuBar.setUseSystemMenuBar directly and with async. No change. Does anybody have update for this? I'm using OpenJDK 14 and JavaFX / OpenJFX 15. – Tobi Dec 11 '20 at 08:35

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 01 '19 at 20:54

Credits to this tutorial that I have followed with success:

https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2015/04/tweaking-the-menu-bar-of-javafx-8-applications-on-os-x/

Below I paste the most important part to get an OS X menu bar compatible with Win classic menu bar:

@Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
    MenuBar menuBar = new MenuBar();
    menuBar.useSystemMenuBarProperty().set(true);

    Menu menu = new Menu("java");
    MenuItem item = new MenuItem("Test");

    menu.getItems().add(item);
    menuBar.getMenus().add(menu);

    primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(new Pane(menuBar)));
    primaryStage.show();
}

This is not the full story. In order to get full compatibility you have to use https://github.com/codecentric/NSMenuFX or otherwise you will still have a bunch of problems, e.g. you cannot internationalize the default menu items. — mipa, Aug 01 '19 at 22:13

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 21 '16 at 06:05

Building on dmolony with some corrections:

MenuBar menuBar = new MenuBar ();
  if( System.getProperty("os.name","UNKNOWN").equals("Mac OS X")) {
  menuBar.setUseSystemMenuBar(true);
}

BorderPane borderPane = new BorderPane ();
borderPane.setTop (menuBar);
primaryStage.setScene (new Scene (borderPane));

How to make an OS X menubar in JavaFX

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