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Start building a native Mac app from your current iPad app using Mac Catalyst.

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Catalyst: Need Help Dragging to App Icon
In AppKit, I can implement NSApplicationDelegate methods for application:openFiles: and such. However, I have not found something similar when using Catalyst - I cannot set the NSApplicationDelegate, and the UIApplicationDelegate methods I have tried are not called when I try dragging a file to the app icon (the icon lights up, so I believe I have configure it properly). Does anyone know how to do that / have a sample that works? Thanks.
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478
Aug ’24
UIDeferredMenuElement on MacCatalyst: closure called only once on first menu display
Hi folks, I'm struggling with an issue on MacCatalyst. I'm using a dynamic menu that is supposed to show the current state of a setting (state = .on / .off). The UIDeferredMenuElement works great on iOS, the closure is called on each display of the (context) menu. On MacCatalyst however - where I use the menu as a submenu in the main menu - the closure is called only once on first menu display. The system seems to show a cached menu item even though I'm using UIDeferredMenuElement.uncached. Here's the relevant code: func getMenuElement() { let element = UIDeferredMenuElement.uncached { completion in let modeString = mode.myLocalizedDescription let trackingMode = <current setting> let mode = <menu item setting option> let state = trackingMode == mode ? .on : .off let action = UIAction(title: modeString, image: <image>, state: state) { _ in viewController.setUserTrackingMode(mode) } completion([action]) } return element } Any ideas how to trick the system into generating the dynamic menu item on each menu display?
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455
Sep ’24
Error In mac catalyst that I can't track down
I have an iOS app I've added Catalyst support to. It is a UIDocument based app using a UIDocumentBrowserController subclass. When the app launches a file browser SHOULD appear in front of the app window. And if I have launched the app for the first time or it was force quit the last time it was used this works as intended. However if I open a document and then quit the app either by closing the app window or choosing AppMenu -> Quit then launch the app again I get an error dialog that only Says "No document could be created" with an okay button. When you click okay the app window comes to the front covering the document browser creating an app killing problem that is confusing for users. Yes they can go to file -> New or File -> Open Document but the situation is very confusing. I have tried returning false for these functions in my AppDelegate: func application(_ application: UIApplication, shouldSaveApplicationState coder: NSCoder) -> Bool { return false } func application(_ application: UIApplication, shouldRestoreApplicationState coder: NSCoder) -> Bool { return false } func application(_ application: UIApplication, shouldSaveSecureApplicationState coder: NSCoder) -> Bool{ return false } And I've added NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows = No in my info.plist and the problem persists. I have set a break point in my document's init(fileURL:) function but it is not called so I have no idea what document is attempting to be created or how to stop it.
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623
Aug ’24
FileProvider extensions Mac Catalyst availability and workarounds
A have the application with iOS and Mac Catalyst versions and I need to make a cloud client for the app's documents. FileProvider would be the great choice for this feature, but I can't believe it doesn't support Mac Catalyst. At this moment I'm almost certain that NSFileProviderReplicatedExtension does not support Mac catalyst officially. And if it so, It would be great to hear the exact status and future plans if any. Unofficially, I managed to run it. I switched the extension's target Supported Destination from Mac Catalyst to Mac and it started to compile. This move seems legit to me. But domain also had to be created, and this part was a way trickier. I've added new bundle to host app(iOS and catalyst), but with supported platform - macOS in build settings. There I created an NSObject subclass DomainManager which calls NSFileProviderManager's addDomain method in its createDomainIfNeeded(), which is also exposed in public extension to NSObject - a kind of "informal protocol" The catalyst app creates bundle by name and loads principal class (DomainManager), but as NSObject reference, and then calls createDomainIfNeeded() method on it. The location defined by domain appears in Finder sidebar, and the dataless item "a file" appears in this location, as defined by stub implementation in the extension enumerator method. This means file system instantiated the extension instance under Mac catalyst and called the protocol method on it. I.e. it seem to work. But the question is whether this solution is stable and legit for the App Store distribution. Or is it pandora box with unforeseeable consequences for user data? Thanks in advance.
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724
Aug ’24
CLI Workflow: IPA Installation
I have a Mac Catalyst app bundle built from Rust. I am able to execute this bundle from my M2 Mac-Mini. I am wondering how might I go about creating a proper IPA archive in order to install to my iOS/iPadOS devices. I am using the following code to generate and sign the app bundle: cd "${APPDIR}/" /usr/bin/codesign -s "Apple Development: <ID>" -fv ./counter.app cd ./counter.app zip -r ../counter.ipa * I then use cfgutil to try to install to my iPhone that is plugged into my Mac-Mini: cfgutil -v install-app ./counter.ipa I receive the following error when trying to install: Waiting for the device [1/4] [*******************************************] 100% cfgutil: error: Information about an app could not be read. (Domain: ConfigurationUtilityKit.error Code: 404) "install-app" failed on <>'s iPhone (ECID: <>). --- Summary --- Operation "install-app" failed on 1 devices. The contents of the app bundle before signing: counter.app/ - Geneva.ttf - counter - Info.plist Contents of Info.plist: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key> <string>com.example.counter</string> <key>CFBundleDisplayName</key> <string>counter</string> <key>CFBundleName</key> <string>counter</string> <key>CFBundleExecutable</key> <string>counter</string> <key>CFBundleVersion</key> <string>0.1.0</string> <key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key> <string>0.1.0</string> <key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key> <string>en_US</string> <key>UILaunchStoryboardName</key> <string></string> <key>LSRequiresIPhoneOS</key> <true/> </dict> </plist> Is there anything I'm doing wrong in signing and/or creating the IPA archive? Or perhaps I am missing something in the bundle itself?
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682
Aug ’24
APIs dropped from MacCatalyst SDK without prior deprecation - is this to be expected?
We maintain a device driver for macOS. This consists of a bunch of components including a Launch Agent, a (Cocoa/AppKit) status bar item app, and a "main" windowed UI app. These all communicate with each other via XPC using the "low level" XPC APIs (libxpc). The launch agent registers a named Mach XPC service, and the two apps connect to it when they launch. Last year, we had an overhaul of the main UI app as we wanted to add a bunch of features. In the process we decided to switch it from Cocoa/AppKit to Mac Catalyst/UIKit as we were also contemplating porting the driver to iPadOS in future; plus, UIKit is a little simpler and I'm not a great UI programmer, so any simplification is welcome. This has worked OK so far, but in our attempt to upgrade our build toolchain from Xcode 15.2 to Xcode 15.4 we found that the Catalyst app would no longer build. Apparently the xpc_connection_create_mach_service() and xpc_connection_set_peer_code_signing_requirement() functions are no longer available as of the Mac Catalyst SDK included with Xcode 15.3. This makes it impossible for the app to connect to the launch agent's XPC service. A few things to note: These functions were never deprecated, so we did not have their impending removal on our radar. It seems they actually used to be available in the iOS SDK and were removed from that, so Mac Catalyst is effectively collateral damage. I don't think these would ever have been usable in apps on the iOS App Store, so perhaps they were removed from the iOS SDK ahead of support for notarised iOS app distribution. So it looks like they might have been removed from Mac Catalyst SDK by accident? I therefore filed a bug about this - FB13929309 - about 6 weeks ago. Reinstating the functions for Mac Catalyst would seem like a very straightforward fix, but I've not had a hint of feedback on the report. I guess my forum question comes down to this: Is Mac Catalyst considered a platform for building macOS apps in its own right? Or are we "holding it wrong" and should we only treat it as a way of tweaking Mac ports of iOS/iPad-first apps? Should we expect APIs to disappear from the Mac Catalyst SDK with zero notice? We can still build with Xcode 15.2 for the moment, and the app built this way runs fine up to and including the macOS 15 beta. But thanks to the limited forward and backward compatibility schedule for Xcode we can't stay on old Xcode for long We're also planning to make some feature changes to the app in the near future, and I don't want to be investing in an app built on a platform with no future. I'd rather port the app back to Cocoa/AppKit before adding features if that's the case.
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1.3k
Aug ’24
Regression in UITabBarController on Catalyst when building under Xcode 16
I am running into an issue with UITabBarController in a Catalyst app when building under Xcode 16 and running on macOS 15. If a UITabBarController is used, the tabs are presented in an unwanted title/toolbar at the top of the window. If you have an app where your views run to the top of the window, this can obscure the content and controls that are near the top. I created a sample application that is attached to the Feedback record (FB14293963). When building under Xcode 15, this is what the app looks like: Under Xcode 16, it looks like this: Beyond this simple example, using UITabBarController in a presented view controller can result in the tabs not showing at all. Also, If you switch the view in the main window to something that isn't a UITabBarController, the tabs still remain at the top. This seems to stem from the tab bar/sidebar changes for iPadOS 18. While this approach can work for simpler apps, it may not work well at all for more complex apps and there really needs to be a way to opt out of this behavior so apps where it is not suited for can still take advantage of features in iPadOS/Catalyst 18. Has anyone discovered a workaround or way to disable the new tab bar behavior with having to write their own version of UITabBarController?
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2w
Sequoia Group Container for Mac Catalyst Apps
Prior to Sequoia, Mac Catalyst Apps worked fine when using group folders that started with group. They now get an alert that the Mac Catalyst app is trying to access data from other applications. This may also impact some SwiftUI developers. According to this the documentation for the App Group Entitlements entitlement, on macOS we should begin use the Team Identifier instead of group. Should Mac Catalyst follow the macOS or iOS rules for com.apple.security.application-groups? If they should need to follow the macOS rules now, that creates several issues for developers. We would now need separate build targets to pick up the different Entitlements files. More distressing is that we would need to do some kind of migration process to get our files to the new location. There wouldn't be a transparent way to do so where the user wasn't warned about the application accessing files that don't belong to it. Any clarification on what Mac Catalyst developers should be doing to prepare for Sequoia would be greatly appreciated.
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2.6k
Feb ’25
UIKit MacCatalyst - How to drag a table view item to Finder to create a folder of items
I have a UITableView that displays a Group/Note hierarchy analogous to a Finder Folder/Files hierarchy. I have implemented Drag and Drop such that if I drag a Note to the Finder Desktop an HTML file is created of the Note, and if I drag a Group to the Finder Desktop a Text file is created of the Group's title. Here is the Helper Dragging extension that I've implemented: // // Model+Dragging.swift // /* Abstract: Helper methods for providing and consuming drag-and-drop data. */ import UIKit import MobileCoreServices // Conditionalize Drag and Drop so it is not in iOS target. #if targetEnvironment(macCatalyst) extension Model { /** A helper function that serves as an interface to the data model, called by the implementation of the `tableView(_ canHandle:)` method. */ func canHandle(_ session: UIDropSession) -> Bool { // In order to enable dragging all text type files changed the class // loadable objects from NSString to my custom TEXTClass. return session.canLoadObjects(ofClass: TEXTClass.self) } /** A helper function that serves as an interface to the data model, called by the `tableView(_:itemsForBeginning:at:)` method. */ func dragItems(for indexPath: IndexPath) -> [UIDragItem] { let itemProvider = NSItemProvider() let item = self.getDisplayItem(for: indexPath.row) if item is Note { let note:Note = item as! Note let html = note.noteHTML let data = html?.data(using: .utf8) // Drag to finder creates an html file. itemProvider.suggestedName = note.title + ".html" itemProvider.registerDataRepresentation(forTypeIdentifier: kUTTypeData as String, visibility: .all) { completion in completion(data, nil) return nil } } else { let group:Group = item as! Group let title = group.title let data = title?.data(using: .utf8) // Drag to finder creates a text file. itemProvider.suggestedName = group.title + ".text" itemProvider.registerDataRepresentation(forTypeIdentifier: kUTTypeData as String, visibility: .all) { completion in completion(data, nil) return nil } } return [ UIDragItem(itemProvider: itemProvider) ] } } #endif I would now like to change the result of dragging a Group to the Finder. Instead of creating a Text file from the drag data, I would like to create a Folder containing the Group's Notes. Note: I am unconcerned with the task of assembling the Group/Notes hierarchies as Folder/Files hierarchies because I already have implemented such previously as a menu export command. My concern is where and how I can communicate it to the Finder in the Drag and Drop process. As a first step I thought I would simply create an empty folder from the drag of a Group. So far, none of my experiments have been successful. Every variation of itemProvider.registerDataRepresentation(forTypeIdentifier: or itemProvider.registerFileRepresentation(forTypeIdentifier: or registerItem(forTypeIdentifier:loadHandler: that I have tried has failed to produce anything but empty TEXT files, if they worked at all. It is my understanding that itemProviders may provide directories instead of files, but I have been unable to find any examples of such. My problem may be a lack of understanding of the syntax and usage of the NSItemProvider.LoadHandler completion block. Any Swift examples on point would be greatly appreciated!
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696
Aug ’24
Cannot build app on Catalyst after updating to Xcode 15.4 RC
We are facing an issue on Catalyst when building our app using Xcode 15.4. The issue is related to precompiled frameworks and seems to be widespread as it happens with multiple vendors (like Firebase or Braze). We are using SPM to add these dependencies, for instance: .package(url: "https://github.com/braze-inc/braze-swift-sdk", from: "8.2.1"), When building, we get the following error: clang:1:1: invalid version number in '-target arm64-apple-ios10.15-macabi' Our macOS deployment target is 12.3. Our iOS deployment target is 15.4. I will try to create a reproducer I can share but I wanted to share this in case there's a known workaround. Thanks in advance!
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4.3k
Aug ’24
How can I make NSToolbar on Catalyst check canPerformAction on UISplitViewController's secondary view controller instead of primary?
I have a Catalyst app that I'm adding a sidebar to via UISplitViewController. I have a toolbar on the window with buttons that I want to be enabled or disabled based on the state of the view controller in the split view's secondary column. But it seems to want to check the primary view controller instead. In the Catalyst tutorial Adding a Toolbar, this exact approach is demonstrated. The RecipeDetailViewController has methods for toggleFavorite and editRecipe, and the toolbar items are set up to reference those selectors in the ToolbarDelegate class. In the screenshots in the tutorial, the buttons are shown as enabled based on RecipeDetailViewController.canPerformAction. But when I download and run the complete project on my computer (macOS 14.4.1), the toolbar items are disabled. And if I add the methods to the RecipeListViewController (which is in the primary column of the UISplitViewController, the toolbar items get enabled. Is there a way to make the system ask the correct split view column for canPerformAction? Or is this a bug?
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670
Sep ’24
"UIDevice.current.batteryLevel" is always "0" in macOS Sonoma 14.4
I recently updated to macOS Sonoma 14.4 and now UIDevice.current.batteryLevel is always 0. Code to reproduce: import SwiftUI struct ContentView: View { @State private var monitoringEnabled = UIDevice.current.isBatteryMonitoringEnabled; @State private var batteryLevel = UIDevice.current.batteryLevel; var body: some View { VStack { Text("Battery Monitoring Enabled: " + String(monitoringEnabled)) Text("Battery Level: " + String(batteryLevel)) Button("Toggle Monitoring") { monitoringEnabled = !monitoringEnabled; UIDevice.current.isBatteryMonitoringEnabled = monitoringEnabled; batteryLevel = UIDevice.current.batteryLevel; } } .padding() } } Run the above on a macOS 14.4 target, click "Toggle Monitoring", and you'll see battery level is reported as 0: I also see the following error in my app logs when running on macOS 14.4: Error retrieving battery status: result=-536870207 percent=0 hasExternalConnected=1 isCharging=0 isFullyCharged=0 This code displays the expected battery level when running on an actual iOS device:
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1.6k
Sep ’24
Why does text selection not work in MacCatalyst app's WKWebView on macOS Sonoma Only
Can not select anything within WkWebView editor view of my MacCatalyst app when running on macOS 14 Sonoma. Any selection gesture or command key fails to select anything in content editable WKWebView, so none of the Editor tools can be activated. My application uses the nnhubbard / ZSSRichTextEditor WKWebView-based Rich Text Editor: https://github.com/nnhubbard/ZSSRichTextEditor. The app is built with Xcode 15.0 or 15.0.1. The app is a Catalyst app that implements an editor view with a ZSSRichTextEditor WKWebView. The problem does not occur if the the app is run in iOS or macOS 11, 12, or 13 (Catalina, Monterey, or Ventura.) The issue only occurs in macOS 14 Sonoma.
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1.2k
Sep ’24
Cannot reorder rows in UITableView under Mac Catalyst
It appears that we are not able to reorder rows in our tables when running our iOS/iPadOS app under Mac Catalyst. It appears that all the delegate methods are returning true indicating the row can be moved and edited. The reordering handles appear in editing move and the row can be moved around (also using drag and drop) but the user interface is not indicating that the row can be dropped to be reordered. It's as if the proposed destination path is being rejected. I tried setting up that delegate method (thinking that maybe the default for that is messed up on Mac Catalyst) but it had no effect. Every table in our system performs this way. Here is a link to an example video that shows the table view not working: https://onsongapp.s3.amazonaws.com/Reordering%20Example.mp4 Please advise if there is something else that needs to be implemented or changed for Mac Catalyst to properly handle table cell reordering.
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921
Aug ’24
Mac Catalyst: Presenting view controller <UIAlertController:> from detached view controller <MyViewController:> is not supported, and may result in incorrect safe area insets and a corrupt root presentation on Sonoma
Okay so I'm getting this log every time I present a UIAlertController: Mac Catalyst: Presenting view controller <UIAlertController: 0x10f027000> from detached view controller <MyViewController: 0x10d104080> is not supported, and may result in incorrect safe area insets and a corrupt root presentation. Make sure <MyViewController: 0x10d104080> is in the view controller hierarchy before presenting from it. Will become a hard exception in a future release. A few points: MyViewController is not detached and the presentation shows just fine. I specifically check for this before presenting the alert controller like so: BOOL okayToPresentError = (self.isViewLoaded && self.view.window != nil); if (okayToPresentError) { [self presentErrorInAlertController:error]; } else { //Wait until view did appear. self.errorToPresentInViewDidAppear = error; } It spews out every time an error is fed back to my app and I present the alert controller (I can turn off the network connection and I show an alert controller with a "retry" button in it which will loop the error back so I can replay the error alert presentation over and over again) . Every time the alert controller is presented, I get this spewing in the console. Please don't start throwing hard exceptions because the check is faulty.
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2.1k
Feb ’25
Strange behavior and log entries for Mac Catalyst Action
I have a text based action for iPhone and Mac Catalyst I am developing in Xcode 14.3.1 on macOS 13.4.1. I have the container app, an action and an AppGroup defined. I have confirmed that I can read the necessary shared defaults when the action launches. At this point the UI for the action is a simple textview in which I hope to display a modified version of the text passed to the action in the NSExtensionItems. I am not using a simulator. I am running the action directly using Xcode. What is happening is that the ActionViewController viewDidLoad runs but no visible window opens. In the console I see this as the action launches: 2023-07-05 18:27:23.692277-0700 XYZ[4634:279295] [ViewBridge] ViewBridge attempted to look up a hosted window with identifier 8E816BD5-67D3-402D-ADEB-AC59EDFA1F3B, but it was never registered. 2023-07-05 18:27:23.692408-0700 XYZ[4634:279295] [WindowHosting] UIScene property of UINSSceneViewController was accessed before it was set. .... The last line above is repeated 12 times.... Any helpful ideas would be deeply appreciated! Steve
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1.3k
Jan ’25
[WindowHosting] UIScene property of UINSSceneViewController was accessed before it was set. What does this mean?
Getting this error several times when presenting a modal window over my splitview window when running it on my Mac using Swift/Mac Catalyst in XCode 14.2. When I click the Cancel button in the window then I get Scene destruction request failed with error: (null) right after an unwind segue. 2023-07-04 16:50:45.488538-0500 Recipes[27836:1295134] [WindowHosting] UIScene property of UINSSceneViewController was accessed before it was set. 2023-07-04 16:50:45.488972-0500 Recipes[27836:1295134] [WindowHosting] UIScene property of UINSSceneViewController was accessed before it was set. 2023-07-04 16:50:45.496702-0500 Recipes[27836:1295134] [WindowHosting] UIScene property of UINSSceneViewController was accessed before it was set. 2023-07-04 16:50:45.496800-0500 Recipes[27836:1295134] [WindowHosting] UIScene property of UINSSceneViewController was accessed before it was set. 2023-07-04 16:50:45.994147-0500 Recipes[27836:1295134] Unbalanced calls to begin/end appearance transitions for <UINavigationController: 0x7f7fdf068a00>. bleep 2023-07-04 16:51:00.655233-0500 Recipes[27836:1297298] Scene destruction request failed with error: (null) I don't quite understand what all all this means. (The "bleep" was a debugging print code I put in the unwind segue). I'm working through Apple's Mac Catalyst tutorial but it seems to be riddled with bugs and coding issues, even in the final part of the completed app which I dowmloaded and ran. I don't see these problems on IPad simulator. I don't know if it's because Catalyst has problems itself or there's something else going on that I can fix myself. Any insight into these errors would be very much appreciated! PS: The app seems to run ok on Mac without crashing despite the muliple issues
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1.9k
Jan ’25
Catalyst & Audio Units: getting plugin dimensions right
I'm experimenting with getting my AUv3 plugins working correctly on iOS and MacOS using Catalyst. I'm having trouble getting the plugin windows to look right in Logic Pro X on MacOS. My plugin is designed to look right in Garageband's minimal 'letterbox' layout (1024x335, or ~1:3 aspect ratio) I have implemented supportedViewConfigurations to help the host choose the best display dimensions On iOS this works, although Logic Pro iPad doesn't seem to call supportedViewConfigurations at all, only Garageband does. On MacOS, Logic Pro does call supportedViewConfigurations but only provides oversized screen sizes, making the plugins look awkward. I can also remove the supportedViewConfigurations method on MacOS, but this introduces other issues: I guess my question boils down to this: how do I tell Logic Pro X on MacOS what the optimal window size of my plugin is, using Mac Catalyst?
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1.4k
Nov ’24
UIDeferredMenuElement With Uncached Provider Not Working on Mac Catalyst. Uncached provider block never called and menu displays as "Loading"
I'm trying to create a dynamic menu on Mac Catalyst. Using a UIBarButtonitem like so to make a "pull down" button: UIDeferredMenuElement *deferredmenuElement; deferredmenuElement = [UIDeferredMenuElement elementWithUncachedProvider:^(void (^ _Nonnull completion)(NSArray<UIMenuElement *> * _Nonnull)) { UIAction *actionOne = [UIAction actionWithTitle:@"Action One" image:nil identifier:nil handler:^(__kindof UIAction * _Nonnull action) { NSLog(@"action one fired."); }]; UIAction *actionTwo = [UIAction actionWithTitle:@"Action Two" image:nil identifier:nil handler:^(__kindof UIAction * _Nonnull action) { NSLog(@"action two fired."); }]; UIAction *actionThree = [UIAction actionWithTitle:@"Action Three" image:nil identifier:nil handler:^(__kindof UIAction * _Nonnull action) { NSLog(@"action three fired."); }]; completion(@[actionOne,actionTwo,actionThree]); }]; UIMenu *wrappedMenu = [UIMenu menuWithChildren:@[deferredmenuElement]]; UIBarButtonItem *uiBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc]initWithTitle:nil menu:wrappedMenu]; uiBarButtonItem.image = [UIImage systemImageNamed:@"rectangle.and.pencil.and.ellipsis"]; self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItems = @[uiBarButtonItem]; The button appears in the toolbar but when I click it to expose the menu I get a menu with on element in it that says "Loading...". The the uncached provider block is never called. Running Ventura 13.2.1 and Xcode 14.2.
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2k
Jul ’24