Title bar missing in NSOpenPanel?

Question

Since OS X 10.11 it seems the title bar no longer appears even when using setTitle: does anyone know what happened and how to get the old behavior back?

Guesswarp

Answer 1

From the AppKit Release Notes for OS X v10.11:

In 10.11, most NSOpenPanels have adopted a design that was formerly reserved only for applications which adopted iCloud Documents support and this panel design was only used if iCloud Drive was turned on in System Preferences. This note will refer to the design as the “iCloud Open Panel Design” although the design is no longer limited to applications with iCloud Documents support.

The iCloud Open Panel Design does not feature any title appearance, therefore it seems to be gone now. I don't think there is a way back.

If you would like to display some sort of message, description or title, you might use the message property instead.

Franchescafranchise

This is most helpful thank you. One question, it seems that the title bar can show at times and I haven't figured out yet why. Is there a way to check if the title bar is visible and then use the message property as a fallback? – Guesswarp

That is weird. I don't know why this happens or how to check for that. You will probably need to go with the message property – Franchescafranchise

When the title is shown, does the panel look like the old one? (Curious) – Franchescafranchise

If the title is shown it looks like the old one yes. On my end the title is not shown and I need the message property to display text. However, based on some reports that I'm getting it can be shown that's why I'm trying to think of a way to check if it's visible and then use the message property as a fallback... – Guesswarp

I assume those apps are simply built against a older SDK. – Franchescafranchise

In macOS 10.12, it appears setting the message property to a string value will cause the title bar to be displayed with that message. I'm not sure why the title property isn't deprecated, as it seems to serve no purpose now. – Abound

We should all file radars for that :) – Franchescafranchise