NSStatusItem Button Title to the Right of the Image

Question

I want an NSStatusItem’s button’s title to appear to the right of its image. Here’s an example, this is the OS X VPN menubar app:

If I set either the title or image for my NSStatusItem’s button, they render correctly. However if I set both, they get superimposed and are horizontally center-aligned.

Is there a way to achieve the side-by-side placement without creating a custom UIView?

Answer 1

This has to do with a change in Yosemite, which deprecated setTitle: and setImage: on NSStatusItem. The documentation isn't super-helpful for what to do instead, however.

I’ve found that you have to set the title and the image on the button property of the NSStatusItem. That’s how I was getting the behaviour described above, with the title and the image centred over each other.

The solution is simple but not immediately apparent. NSStatusBarItem responds to the setImagePosition: method of NSButton. Here’s the code that fixed my issue:

self.statusItem.button.image = [NSImage imageNamed:@"StatusBarIcon"];
self.statusItem.button.imagePosition = NSImageLeft;

Having done this, setting self.statusItem.button.title positions the items correctly.