Enabling application menu in a NW.js app for Mac OS

Question

I am using NW.js to create a standalone application for Mac OS X. The application launches fine, but the application menu (just to the right of the Apple menu) contains no items. I had understood that a default set of menus and menu items would be created, as shown in this screenshot, taken from Arvind Ravulavaru' tutorial.

Here are my bare-bones files:

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>Hello World</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Hello World</h1>
</body>
</html>

package.json

{
  "name": "Hello World"
, "version": "0.0.1"
, "description": "Barebones NW.js app"
, "main": "index.html"
, "window": {
    "toolbar": false
  , "width": 800
  , "height": 600
  }
, "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  }
, "author": ""
, "license": "MIT"
}

Here are my steps:

Select index.html and package.json and use Finder's File > Compress 2 items to create a ZIP file from them.
Rename this ZIP file app.nw
Download the 64-bit build of NW.js for Mac OS X
Unzip the downloaded file, to create a folder contain nwjs.app
Right-click on the nwjs.app and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu
Navigate to nwjs.app/Content/Resources
Place the app.nw file inside this Resources folder
Modify the file at nwjs.app/Content/Info.plist so that <key>CFBundleName</key> is associated with <string>Hello World</string>. (This defines the name of the application menu.)
Rename the nwjs.app as HelloWorld.app
Right-click on the HelloWorld.app and select Open from the contextual menu
Enter an admin username and password to allow the app to open
Click the Hello World application menu — nothing happens apart from a highlight

What do I need to do to get a functional application menu, with a Quit item to close the app?

James Newton James Newton · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-08T16:34:53

A Google search for nwjs default menu mac led me to Dickson Tam's nwjs-osx-menu npm package.

My additional steps were:

In a Terminal window, cd to the folder containing the main index.html file
Run npm install nwjs-osx-menu. This adds (a node-modules folder containing) a folder named nwjs-osx-menu.
In a text editor, open the file nwjs-osx-menu/index.js
Change the line mb.createMacBuiltin('My App'); to mb.createMacBuiltin('Hello World');
Create a new ZIP, including the new nwjs-osx-menu folder
Rename the zip file as app.nw
Replace the existing file at HelloWorld.app/Content/Resources/app.nw with the new one
Launch the HelloWorld.app

Enabling application menu in a NW.js app for Mac OS

1 Answers