Ultimate Catalyst Guide

Catalyst, just like Cocoa, uses the responder chain to figure out whether an action in a menu can be performed. Remember, that a menu bar on iOS is composed out of UIAction, UICommand, and UIMenu objects.

The way that works is as follows:

1. When you open a menu in the menu bar with your mouse
2. UIKit will have a look at the first responder and call
3. canPerformAction(_:withSender:) to figure out if the first responder has a matching @IBAction someMethod that fits the selector from the menubar item in question
4. If the first responder returns no, it will ask the next responder
5. If a responder returns yes, then this menu bar entry will be enabled (clickable) and this responder (i.e. object or view controller) will be set as the current target of the menu bar entry.
6. If the next responder is nil - that is, it UIKit reached the end of the responder chain - it will stop and the menu bar entry will be disabled.

This process happens for each item in the menubar.

If you want to influence how a menu bar item becomes enabled / disabled based on the particulars of your view controller, you can override canPerformAction and write custom logic. Here is a quick example. Here, we imagine that a menubar action should only be enabled if we have actual text in our textField.

override func canPerformAction(_ action: Selector, withSender sender: Any?) -> Bool {

   guard !(textField.text ?? \"\").isEmpty else { return false }

   return super.canPerformAction(action, withSender: sender)

}