How to make an OS X menubar in JavaFX - javafx-2

Question

I'm unable to make a JavaFX MenuBar show as a standard OS X menu bar, at the top of the screen.
Here's what I've tried in my subclass of Application:
public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
final Menu menu1 = new Menu("File");
final Menu menu2 = new Menu("Options");
final Menu menu3 = new Menu("Help");
MenuBar menuBar = new MenuBar();
menuBar.getMenus().addAll(menu1, menu2, menu3);
menuBar.setUseSystemMenuBar(true);
primaryStage.setTitle("Creating Menus with JavaFX 2.0");
final Group rootGroup = new Group();
final Scene scene = new Scene(rootGroup, 800, 400, Color.WHEAT);
rootGroup.getChildren().add(menuBar);
primaryStage.setScene(scene);
primaryStage.show();
}
I assumed that the use of
menuBar.setUseSystemMenuBar(true);
would do the trick, but actually it makes the menuBar disappear altogether.
I'm using Java 1.8.0-b132 on OS X 10.9

Answer 1

I've had success with this code:
MenuBar menuBar = new MenuBar();
final String os = System.getProperty("os.name");
if (os != null && os.startsWith("Mac"))
menuBar.useSystemMenuBarProperty().set(true);
BorderPane borderPane = new BorderPane();
borderPane.setTop(menuBar);
primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(borderPane));

Answer 2

It looks like OS X only displays the Menus if they have MenuItems inside them (which is a bit weird, as you can attach functionality to empty Menus).

Answer 3

I created a little project that gives you access to the auto-generated menu bar on OS X: NSMenuFX
Update: With the new pure JavaFX version, the API has slightly changed
It allows you to replace the default Mac OS menu bar items, so you can to something like this:
// Get the toolkit
MenuToolkit tk = MenuToolkit.toolkit();
// Create default application menu with app name "test"
Menu defaultApplicationMenu = tk.createDefaultApplicationMenu("test");
// Replace the autogenerated application menu
tk.setApplicationMenu(defaultApplicationMenu);
// Since we now have a reference to the menu, we can rename items
defaultApplicationMenu.getItems().get(1).setText("Hide all the otters");
You can of course also add new menu items as you do in your example above.

Answer 4

I just ran into this issue myself - I noticed that the system menubar wouldn't initially appear in OSX until I switched to another application and back.
Wrapping the setUseSystemMenuBar call in a runLater did the trick, so I unscientifically concluded there's more window setup required before OSX can successfully register an application menu.
Platform.runLater(() -> menuBar.setUseSystemMenuBar(true));

Answer 5

Credits to this tutorial that I have followed with success:
https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2015/04/tweaking-the-menu-bar-of-javafx-8-applications-on-os-x/
Below I paste the most important part to get an OS X menu bar compatible with Win classic menu bar:
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
MenuBar menuBar = new MenuBar();
menuBar.useSystemMenuBarProperty().set(true);
Menu menu = new Menu("java");
MenuItem item = new MenuItem("Test");
menu.getItems().add(item);
menuBar.getMenus().add(menu);
primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(new Pane(menuBar)));
primaryStage.show();
}

Answer 6

Building on dmolony with some corrections:
MenuBar menuBar = new MenuBar ();
if( System.getProperty("os.name","UNKNOWN").equals("Mac OS X")) {
menuBar.setUseSystemMenuBar(true);
}
BorderPane borderPane = new BorderPane ();
borderPane.setTop (menuBar);
primaryStage.setScene (new Scene (borderPane));