OS X version of bringSubviewToFront:?

Question

I need to replicate the function of bringSubviewToFront: on the iPhone, but I am programming on the Mac. How can this be done?

Digitalin

Answer 1

Haven't actually tried this out - and there may be better ways to do it - but this should work:

NSView* superview = [view superview];  
[view removeFromSuperview];  
[superview addSubview:view];  

This will move 'view' to the front of its siblings

Dagley

Probably inefficient, but it accomplishes what I wanted, so thanks. – Digitalin

It may be worth investigating using the setSubviews: method instead. – Ligament

Answer 2

Pete Rossi's answer didn't work for me because I needed to pop the the view to front when dragging it with the mouse. However, along the same lines the following did work without killing the mouse:

CALayer* superlayer = [[view layer] superlayer];
[[view layer] removeFromSuperlayer];
[superlayer addSublayer:[view layer]];

Also, the following placed in a NSView subclass or category is pretty handy:

- (void) bringToFront {
    CALayer* superlayer = [[self layer] superlayer];
    [[self layer] removeFromSuperlayer];
    [superlayer addSublayer:[self layer]];
}

Daph

I came looking for the solution to this and, barring a kerfuffle because my hosting view was not layer backed, this worked a treat. Thank you for sharing it. – Havenot

Answer 3

also be sure to enable the layer for quartz rendering:

...
NSImageView *anImage = [[NSImageView alloc] initWithFrame:NSRectMake(0,0,512,512)];
[anImageView setWantsLayer:YES];
...

otherwise, your layer cannot be rendered correctly.

Pink

Answer 4

Pete Rossi's answer works, but remember to retain the view when you remove it from the superview.

You can add this in a category on NSView :

-(void)bringSubviewToFront:(NSView*)view
{
    [view retain];
    [view removeFromSuperview];  
    [self addSubview:view];  
    [view release];
}

Blat

Answer 5

Sibling views that overlap can be hard to make work right in AppKit—it was completely unsupported for a long time. Consider making them CALayers instead. As a bonus, you may be able to reuse this code in your iOS version.

Khufu

Answer 6

This is Swift 3.0 solution:

extension NSView {
    public func bringToFront() {
        let superlayer = self.layer?.superlayer
        self.layer?.removeFromSuperlayer()
        superlayer?.addSublayer(self.layer!)
    }
}

Wafture