9. Status Items

“Should? Will. Should? Will. Should? Will. Did!”

—quote based on Cocoa delegate methods

This chapter discusses those little black and white icons on the right side of the menu bar as displayed in Figure 9.1. Before we assign these items a real name, let's make something perfectly clear: They are not all created equal. Those created by Apple that can be command dragged to swap locations and added simply by dropping a bundle on the menu bar are called NSMenuExtras. However, the NSMenuExtra class is a private API, so, as developers who do not work for Apple, we need to create NSStatusItems instead.

Figure 9.1. The menu bar filled with “little black and white icons.”

Also, Apple says status items are reserved for Apple's use only ...

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