NSButton grow-shrink animation in Cocoa macOS application in Objective-C

Question

I am having a mac app in Objective-C.

In which, I want my button to animate like grow after some seconds.

I couldn't find anything in Cocoa application.

[UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];
CGRect pos=v2.bounds;
pos.size.height=500;
pos.size.width=500;
[UIView setAnimationDuration:1.0];

[UIView setAnimationRepeatCount:15];
[UIView setAnimationRepeatAutoreverses:YES];
v2.bounds=pos;
[UIView commitAnimations];

I used the above code in ios to grow a button but how to make this happen in cocoa mac application?

So basically I want a grown and shrink animation of an NSButton.

Answer 1

In cocoa you have a several ways of animations, you probably need to chose an appropriate for you. For instance you can use NSAnimationContext for this task with a code like this:

- (IBAction)buttonPressed:(id)sender {
    [self runAnimations:10];
}

- (void)runAnimations:(NSUInteger)repeatCount {

    CGFloat oldWidth = self.buttonWidthConstraint.constant;
    CGFloat oldHeight = self.buttonHeightConstraint.constant;

    [NSAnimationContext runAnimationGroup:^(NSAnimationContext *context) {
        context.duration = 1.;
        self.buttonWidthConstraint.animator.constant = 500;
        self.buttonHeightConstraint.animator.constant = 500;
    } completionHandler:^{
            //change back to original size
            [NSAnimationContext runAnimationGroup:^(NSAnimationContext *context) {
                context.duration = 1.;
                self.buttonWidthConstraint.animator.constant = oldWidth;
                self.buttonHeightConstraint.animator.constant = oldHeight;
            } completionHandler:^{
                if (repeatCount - 1 > 0) {
                    [self runAnimations:repeatCount - 1];
                }
            }];
    }];
}

It is much better to animate a constraints neither operating with bounds directly. But if you really need to - you can adopt this code to whatever you want.

A great video about all the options you have on OSX for animations may be seen in WWDC 2013, Best Practices for Cocoa Animation, I encourage you to watch it completely.