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objective-cmacoscocoaosx-lionosx-snow-leopard

How to assign application to all desktops (spaces) of Mac OS X Lion using Objective C?


I am trying to create an Application on Mac OS X Lion which requires application to be assigned to All Desktops (Spaces). This can be manually done by Right clicking on application's dock icon and Selecting Options > Assign To > All Desktops. But, I need to find a way to do this via Objective C. Is there a way to achieve this programmatically?


Solution

  • You can use method setCollectionBehavior: of NSWindow with the NSWindowCollectionBehaviorCanJoinAllSpaces bitwise flag.

    It will make the window visible on all spaces.

    NSUInteger collectionBehavior;
    
    // Gets the current collection behavior of the window
    collectionBehavior = [ myWindow collectionBehavior ];
    
    // Adds the option to make the window visible on all spaces
    collectionBehavior |= NSWindowCollectionBehaviorCanJoinAllSpaces;
    
    // Sets the new collection behaviour
    [ myWindow setCollectionBehavior: collectionBehavior ];
    

    Note

    This method was introduced in Mac OS X 10.6.

    On Mac OS X 10.5, you'll need to use the canBeVisibleOnAllSpaces: method of NSWindow.