Customize "Avalonia Application" title in MacOS

[alessandrofrancesconi]

I've noticed that when running my project after dotnet publish on MacOS (Catalina), the title "Avalonia Application" appears in the upper bar

Also there is an "About" submenu that opens this dialog:

How can I change this and maybe replace with custom graphics?

[kekekeks]

1. Set Name property on the Application in your App.xaml
2. Add a customized native app menu to your App.xaml:

  <NativeMenu.Menu>
    <NativeMenu>
      <NativeMenuItem Header="About My App" Command="{Binding AboutCommand}" />
    </NativeMenu>
  </NativeMenu.Menu>

it will replace the default one.

We probably need that in our default app template.

[sandermvanvliet]

I've just found this issue after some googling and wanted to add some additional details.

When you set Name in your App.xaml but package your app in a bundle you'll find that if you set CFBundleName in the Info.plist to something else then macOS will use the value from CFBundleName

For example:

App.xaml

<Application
   ...
   Name="Test app">
</Application>

Info.plist

<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        ....
        <key>CFBundleName</key>
        <string>Something else</string>
        ....
    </dict>
</plist>

build and publish the app to TestApp.app and then from Finder run the app:

You could omit CFBundleName from the Info.plist in the app bundle, however if you have CFBundleDisplayName specified then macOS will use that value as the title for the app.

When you specify both CFBundleName and CFBundleDisplayName then CFBundleName takes precedence.

The Apple Developer docs specify that CFBundleName:

may be displayed to users in situations such as the absence of a value for CFBundleDisplayName

Whereas CFBundleDisplayName documentation states:

specifies the display name of the bundle, visible to users and used by Siri.
Which means that this is a key you should most probably always include in your app bundle.

So to reduce the amount of head-scratching and debugging for other people, my recommendation would be to:

1. Always set CFBundleDisplayName in Info.plist
2. Set CFBundleName to the same value
3. Ensure that Name in App.xaml is set to the same value

Depending on the build configuration it seems like a smart idea to generate the contents of Info.plist at publish time based on the Name in App.xaml.

I'll create a PR on the Avalonia documentation site to make sure this appears there too.

Note: I tried to actually call AvaloniaNativePlatform.SetupApplicationName() somewhere after the app starts but whatever you provide there is ignored by macOS.

Note 2: This all of course doesn't show up when you launch the app from Rider or the output directory...

[jeffdoolittle]

@kekekeks

Referring to this comment: #3541 (comment)

Where do you define the command since in this case the binding is happening in App.xaml?

[timunie]

Different possibility I think. If it was me I would have an AppViewModel which has a static instance and holds all of my Apps Commands. In the binding you can set that instance as source via x:static

[kekekeks]

@jeffdoolittle App class can have it's own DataContext You are supposed to initialize it in OnFrameworkInitializationCompleted

[timunie]

Converted this into Q&A as this is neither a bug nor a feature request. If you disagree please let us know.