Cocoa: Tab view with toolbar icons for switching t

Question

Various Preferences dialogs (Safari, Mail, Xcode4, and any that uses NSPreferences) and Xcode4's Organizer use something reminiscent of a tab view -- except that is uses toolbar buttons for switching between tabs. These buttons are "pressed".

What is the best way to implement such a tab view? Is there a documented public API for implementing them?

Answer 1

Since Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), the easiest way to do this is to lay out your preferences dialog window in a storyboard using an NSTabViewController, and set its tabStyle to NSTabViewControllerTabStyleToolbar.

WWDC 2013 Session 212: Storyboards and Controllers on OS X walks through this scenario starting around 10m45s.

Answer 2

BWToolkit has code that does what you want.

If you fancy implementing it yourself, you could take a look at the code and see what it's doing. Hint: NSToolbar's delegate protocol has a toolbarSelectableItemIdentifiers: method, and you can create a tab view without showing tabs, switching between tabs programmatically.