Create java applications with MacBook Pro touchbar support?

Question

as the tile describe, I would love to have the ability to add some cool touchbar buttons to my java application for MacBook Pro 2016 users.. I've not seen yet if there is a way to implement it in java yet.

Anyone got some knowledge on that?

Answer 1

There is a new Java library for interacting with the NSTouchBar API called JTouchBar.

For example using SWT

Shell shell = ...

JTouchBar jTouchBar = new JTouchBar();
jTouchBar.setCustomizationIdentifier("MySWTJavaTouchBar");

// flexible space
jTouchBar.addItem(new TouchBarItem(TouchBarItem.NSTouchBarItemIdentifierFlexibleSpace));

// button
TouchBarButton touchBarButtonImg = new TouchBarButton();
touchBarButtonImg.setTitle("Button 1");
touchBarButtonImg.setAction(new TouchBarViewAction() {
    @Override
    public void onCall( TouchBarView view ) {
        System.out.println("Clicked Button_1.");
    }
});

Image image = new Image();
img.setName(ImageName.NSImageNameTouchBarColorPickerFill);
touchBarButtonImg.setImage(image);

jTouchBar.addItem(new TouchBarItem("Button_1", touchBarButtonImg, true));

// label
TouchBarTextField touchBarTextField = new TouchBarTextField();
touchBarTextField.setStringValue("TextField 1");

jTouchBar.addItem(new TouchBarItem("TextField_1", touchBarTextField, true));

// enable touchbar
jTouchBar.enableForShell(shell);

You can find the library on Github: https://github.com/Thizzer/JTouchBar

Answer 2

By the looks of it, apple doesn't provide support for adding items to the touch bar, never mind doing it in java.

While going through some documentation for the touch bar, it would appear that you will also need an instance of the NSTouchBarItem class. Java doesn't have that, nor provide a way to get that. I doubt that using native methods would work as well, seeing how the instance is app specific and is passed to the application through apple.

Accessing the bar is possible, but only natively.