How can I hide the Dock icon on MacOS? Info.plist not working

[Irasil]

I have read that I need to set LSUIElement to YES in the Info.plist to prevent the icon from appearing on the Dock Documentation Archive.

After testing this, I noticed that the Info.plist has no effect on the app. No matter what I set CFBundleName and/or CFBundleDisplayName to, the app retains the name I assigned in app.axaml. This should not be the case according to this discussion (#9346). What am I doing wrong?

Here is the structure of the app:

The .Avalonia project is for the UI; here, I have also assigned the name in the app.axaml file, and .Avalonia.MacOS for all platform-specific aspects. I created the Info.plist in the MacOS project.
For creating the .Avalonia.MacOS project, I used the "AvaloniaUI .Net App" Template and changed the TFM to net7.0-macos, referencing the UI project.

contents of the Info.plist:

<dict>
	<key>CFBundleDisplayName</key>
	<string>Hallo</string>
	<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
	<string>IBI.aws.Avalonia.MacOS</string>
	<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
	<string>com.myapp.macos</string>
	<key>CFBundleName</key>
	<string>MyApp</string>
	<key>LSUIElement</key>
	<true/>
	<key>MonoBundleExecutable</key>
	<string>IBI.aws.Avalonia.MacOS.exe</string>
</dict>

Even when I publish the app and customize the Info.plist in the .app, the name of the app remains unchanged. Does the Info.plist have no impact on Avalonia apps?

Or is there another way to hide the Dock icon without using Info.plist?

[maxkatz6]

It has, if Info.plist is assigned right, it should work with Avalonia app just like with any other .NET app, there is zero difference.

The only non-standard thing that Avalonia does with the app title - is setting app title in runtime via changing process name. It might change dock tile name as well, but not in the applications list I suppose. Also should affect the icon.

I can't help what's exactly wrong with LSUIElement though.

[thevortexcloud]

I can't help what's exactly wrong with LSUIElement though.

We worked it out. Avalonia has a bunch of code which seems to override the option at runtime (Avalonia has its own platform specific option to manage it). If that should be considered a bug or not I am not sure.

[Irasil]

Here's what I found out so far:

I created a new Avalonia Desktop project on Windows. I cloned it on Mac and executed dotnet publish -r osx-x64 --configuration Release -p:UseAppHost=true. After that, I copied the Info.plist from the documentation and changed CFBundleExecutable to my executable. I used the shell script to create a .app. When I run the app, the title is "Avalonia Application."

First change in the project:
I added Name="Test" in app.axaml. After publishing and running the script, the title is "MyApp," as defined in Info.plist. That's not bad :) However, if I add LSUIElement, it is ignored.

For my application, I need a project with the TFM net7.0-macos to access native APIs. If I change the TFM of the test project described above to net7.0-macos, I also have to change <OutputType> from WinExe to Exe. When I publish, I only get a .pkg file. Therefore, I can't apply the script to create an app bundle. If I look in /bin/Release/net7.0-macos/, I see that a .app bundle was created. It can be launched but has the title "Avalonia Application" again. When I open the .app bundle via "Show package content," I see that an Info.plist was automatically created, with the project name defined as the Name. So, as soon as I set the TFM to net7.0-macos, the Info.plist is ignored.

However, if I create a .Net Mac App project on Mac, which also has net7.0-macos as the TFM, and publish it with the same command, it doesn't create a .pkg, it create an .app, which doesn't ignore the Info.plist, and LSUIElement works right away.

Can someone explain why Avalonia + net7.0-macos results in a .pkg file, and is there a way to bypass this?

I'm new to programming and don't have much experience, so I would appreciate any hints on what I might be doing wrong. I'm really desperate...

Thanks in advance.

[Irasil]

I hate to say this, but I've also come across this inconsistency and have already tried both options without success.

I have tested these options:

<key>LSUIElement</key>
<string>YES<string/>
<string>yes<string/>
<string>true<string/>
<string>1<string/>

With Boolean, I can only test <true/> since the <boolean> tag is not recognized.

Furthermore, I found out that LSRequiresIPhoneOS is also ignored.

[thevortexcloud]

Are you trying those all at once? It's a key value list from what I can tell. So each key is followed by a single corresponding value.

Also apparently you are not the first person to have this problem?

#4849

It sounds like you can actually set this value at runtime using a C API. Which may work better. I am not sure. In any case you would need to use DllImport for this.

That said if you are just trying to hide the dock icon, there is apparently a Mac specific Avalonia launch option for that. Which might actually be the problem if it's overriding this for you (the default value is to show the dock icon).

https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia/blob/0c4f372410d0f45c814930da84c73f65b377176b/src/Avalonia.Native/AvaloniaNativePlatformExtensions.cs#L87C5-L91C1

From reading the Avalonia native code it looks like it just sets this value https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsapplicationactivationpolicy/nsapplicationactivationpolicyaccessory

Which apparently is the same as LSUIElement. So I am guessing this will solve your problem.

[Irasil]

No, I tested the different values one after the other :)

I appreciate this information, and I think that will be the solution.

Unfortunately, this is all new to me, and I don't quite understand what I need to do. Am I correct in understanding that I simply need to set ShowInDock to false?

If so, I don't know how to do that. I searched for Avalonia.Native.OSX.xcodeproj, but I can't find it. Do I need to download the Avalonia repository and then set ShowInDock to false there? And then add my edited dylib in the AppBuilder afterward? As described here macOS Development?

[thevortexcloud]

Unfortunately, this is all new to me, and I don't quite understand what I need to do. Am I correct in understanding that I simply need to set ShowInDock to false?

If I am reading all the code correctly, yes. I however still have no Mac to test on or any real experience programming for Macs.

If so, I don't know how to do that.

Avalonia allows for setting a bunch of platform specific options during Launch. Typically you do something like

class Program {
    // Initialization code. Don't use any Avalonia, third-party APIs or any
    // SynchronizationContext-reliant code before AppMain is called: things aren't initialized
    // yet and stuff might break.
    [STAThread]
    public static void Main(string[] args) => BuildAvaloniaApp()
        .StartWithClassicDesktopLifetime(args);

    // Avalonia configuration, don't remove; also used by visual designer.
    public static AppBuilder BuildAvaloniaApp()
        => AppBuilder.Configure<App>()
            .UsePlatformDetect()
            .WithInterFont()
            .LogToTrace()
            .UseReactiveUI()
            .With(new MacOSPlatformOptions() { ShowInDock = false});
}

[Irasil]

If you don't have a cape yet, you definitely need one. You're a fucking hero!
I thank you endlessly!

[thevortexcloud]

Haha, your welcome! This however is something that really should be documented on the Avalonia docs site (along with all the other platform options). It's not even mentioned you can set platform options anywhere that I can see.

[timunie]

any contribution to the docs are welcome