Compose Macos Dock

This project is a native compose for macos app that also allows the dock icon to be drawn via compose. This is only a proof of concept.

Building

The app can be run from XCode.

The build can be finicky with cocoapods. If XCode can't find symbols, run

./gradlew syncFramework -Pkotlin.native.cocoapods.platform=macosx -Pkotlin.native.cocoapods.archs=arm64 -Pkotlin.native.cocoapods.configuration=Debug

How it works

val scene = ImageComposeScene(100, 100) {
    Box(modifier = Modifier
    .fillMaxSize()
    .clip(RoundedCornerShape(20.dp))
    .background(Color.White),
    contentAlignment = Alignment.Center) {
        Column(horizontalAlignment = Alignment.CenterHorizontally) {
            Text("Counter:")
            Text(counter.toString())
        }
    }
}

val bytes = scene.render().encodeToData()?.bytes ?: error("Unable to get Data from scene")

val data = bytes.usePinned {
    NSData.dataWithBytes(it.addressOf(0), bytes.size.toULong())
}

val imageView = NSImageView()
imageView.image = NSImage(data = data)

NSApp?.dockTile?.contentView = imageView
NSApp?.dockTile?.display()

We use an ImageComposeScene to render the icon, then convert it to png data. After this, we can create an NSImage from the data and show it in a NSImageView. Finally, we pass the image view to NSApp's dockTile and tell it to display the new image.