OS X version of bringSubviewToFront:? - objective-c

Question

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

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

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]];
}

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.

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];
}

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.

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!)
}
}