How to get Position, Width and Height of Mac OS X Dock? Cocoa/Carbon/C++/Qt

Question

I'm trying to get position and width of Mac OS X Dock in my C++/Qt app. But I can only find ways to get Available space of Desktop, it means I can get Dock height, but not width.

Is there ways to get Dock position and width using native OS API?

Answer 1

This might help in a hack-free solution, NSScreen provides a method (visibleframe) which subtracts the menu and the Dock from the screen size. The frame method contains both.

[NSStatusBar system​Status​Bar].thickness will return the height of the Menu bar.

https://developer.apple.com/reference/appkit/nsscreen/1388369-visibleframe?language=objc

Answer 2

To expand upon MacAndor's answer, you can infer the dock position by comparing the -[NSScreen visibleFrame] (which excludes the space occupied by the dock and the menu bar) with the -[NSScreen frame] which encompasses the entire screen width and height.

The example code below is dependent on the screen the window resides on. This code can be adapted to work with multiple displays by enumerating through all screens instead of using the window's screen.

// Infer the dock position (left, bottom, right)
NSScreen *screen = [self.window screen];    
NSRect visibleFrame = [screen visibleFrame];
NSRect screenFrame = screen.frame;

if (visibleFrame.origin.x > screenFrame.origin.x) {
    NSLog(@"Dock is positioned on the LEFT");
} else if (visibleFrame.origin.y > screenFrame.origin.y) {
    NSLog(@"Dock is positioned on the BOTTOM");
} else if (visibleFrame.size.width < screenFrame.size.width) {
    NSLog(@"Dock is positioned on the RIGHT");
} else {
    NSLog(@"Dock is HIDDEN");
}