Contextual Menu Plugins for Leopard OS

Question

I am writing Contextual Menu Plugins for Leopard OS and referring Writing Contextual Menu Plugins for OS X, part 1 article by Brent Simmons. My plugin is working fine.

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Is there any way to move my test menu into main menu (above the Label)?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 08 '12 at 22:56

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The short answer is "no".

The OS controls what gets displayed in that menu, so in order to change it around, you would need to call private methods, reimplement system-level functionality, and just in general do some Very Bad Things which would be unsafe, could break at a moment's notice, and possibly work differently between even dot releases of the same OS.

answered Jan 08 '12 at 22:56

Mark F

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Do you know how to re-implement system level functionality and private method names? – Parag Bafna Jan 10 '12 at 05:46
There's some info about it here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1294335/how-to-write-os-x-finder-plugin – Mark F Jan 12 '12 at 03:55

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 15 '12 at 04:05

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Yes, it's called a system service, and was introduced in OS X 10.5. I know for a fact that many applications can do this, and Automator routines can be triggered this way because Automator itself is a system service. To see a service applicable for an application (i.e. Finder) go to the Application menu on the top bar (for lack of better name T_T), such as the Finder bolded text, and go down to Services > and it will show you all services that can be used in the app. If you need pointers on how to build this, just comment here.

EDIT: Yes, a SIMBL plugin is also considered a service, and on second read of your question, that's what you want.

answered Jan 15 '12 at 04:05

Aditya Vaidyam

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system service is also coming in more option. – Parag Bafna Jan 16 '12 at 06:20
If that's what you'd like, then it may be worth noting that it will only show through the Services > in the context menu. SIMBL has further integrated support. This is all in light of the Finder Cocoa rewrite in 10.6. – Aditya Vaidyam Jan 16 '12 at 06:29
Dropbox contextual menu is coming in main menu on Leopard. – Parag Bafna Jan 16 '12 at 07:10
They do a quick and dirty Finder hack to get it to work, mach_star: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8156251/custom-entry-in-the-contextual-menu – Aditya Vaidyam Jan 16 '12 at 07:47

Contextual Menu Plugins for Leopard OS

2 Answers2