AIR application on the menubar?

Question

I'm trying to look for tutorials on getting my AIR application to OSX's menubar when minimized. However, when I try to search for it, I end up getting examples on doing it for the system tray on Windows and the Dock on macs. I don't want the app to stay on the dock when the window is not visible. I want it to minimize to the menubar instead. Can anyone give me a hand? I'm not even sure where to start.

EDIT: I don't want to learn about working with the OS X dock (on this post at least). I'm interested in working with the menubar. (See image below.) enter image description here

This is not supported on os x out of the box. You may be able to add this functionality by writing a native extension — francis, Mar 27 '12 at 13:08
Can you point me to the right direction? I already tried searching but I keep ending up here on my own thread. :/ — Propeller, Mar 27 '12 at 16:27
Did you manage to get it working using Native Extensions or did you not try it ? — Wim Deblauwe, May 23 '12 at 14:43

Nuthinking · Answer 1 · 2012-08-08T22:54:46.457

Looks like you need to distribute your app as .dmg and include a native process. It should be possible though, but you need to write the MacOS bit yourself. Check this out: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/quickstart/articles/interacting_with_native_process.html

This is actually a pretty good tutorial on how to create a status bar icon in OSX: http://www.sonsothunder.com/devres/livecode/tutorials/StatusMenu.html

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 27 '12 at 09:56

I don't think menu bar icons (os system tray icons, in Windows lexicon) are supported for OS X in AIR. You can test it running this snippet in your Mac:

if(NativeApplication.supportsDockIcon){
    trace( "Dock icon IS supported" );
}else{
    trace( "Dock icon IS NOT supported :(" ); 
}

if (NativeApplication.supportsSystemTrayIcon){
    trace( "System Tray icon IS supported" );
}else{
    trace( "System Tray icon IS NOT supported :(" ); 
}

As read in Adobe's support site:

"Applications icons are supported on both the Mac OS X and Windows operating systems, although the conventions for using these icons on each system are a bit different. On Mac OS X, the application icon is the dock icon and is represented by the AIR DockIcon object. On Windows, the application icon is the system tray icon and is represented by the AIR SystemTrayIcon object. The icon object for your application is created automatically. The object type is determined according to the operating system on which the instance of your application is running."

More info and example code here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/quickstart/articles/stopwatch_dock_system_tray.html

Thanks but I believe you are referring to the dock icon and not the menubar which is the whole point of my question. — Propeller, Mar 27 '12 at 16:29
Sorry, I was trying to say that, in AIR, menu bar icons are not supported for OS X. @lost's suggestion regarding Native Extensions seems like a good path to investigate, if you're able to deal with the Objective-C part (which I am not). — protozoo, Mar 27 '12 at 20:41
Hasn't anyone come up with a sort-of wrapper to hack around this limitation? Something that's easily customizable? — Propeller, Mar 28 '12 at 02:13

AIR application on the menubar?

2 Answers2