Now that it's 2016 and we're using vibrant titlebars with full size content views, I'll add my thoughts to how someone might accomplish this. Hopefully, this will help anyone who came here looking for help on this, as it helped me.
This answers the question in regards to scrolling under the titlebar, but you could easily modify this technique to scroll under other things using the insets and caret position.
To get a scroll view (with or without an NSTextView inside of it) to scroll behind a titlebar, you can use:
// For transparent title.
window.titlebarAppearsTransparent = true
window.styleMask = window.styleMask | NSFullSizeContentViewWindowMask
window.appearance = NSAppearance(named: NSAppearanceNameVibrantLight)
This effectively overlays the titlebar of the NSWindow onto the window's contentView.
To constrain something to the top of the window without knowing the height of the titlebar:
// Make a constraint for SOMEVIEW to the top layout guide of the window:
let topEdgeConstraint = NSLayoutConstraint(
item: SOMEVIEW, attribute: NSLayoutAttribute.Top,
relatedBy: NSLayoutRelation.Equal,
toItem: window.contentLayoutGuide,
attribute: NSLayoutAttribute.Top, multiplier: 1.0, constant: 0.0)
// Turn the constraint on automatically:
topEdgeConstraint.active = true
This allows you to constrain the top of an element to the bottom of the titlebar (and or toolbar + any accessory views it may have). This was shown at WWDC in 2015: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2014/220/
To get the scrollview to scroll under the titlebar but show its scrollbars inside the unobscured part of the window, pin it to the top of the content view in IB or via code, which will cause it to be under the titlebar. Then, tell it to automatically update it's insets:
scrollView.automaticallyAdjustsContentInsets = true
Finally, you can subclass your window and handle the cursor/caret position. There is a presumed bug (or developer error on my part) that doesn't make the scrollview always scroll to the cursor/caret when it goes above or below the content insets of the scrollview.
To fix this, you must manually find the caret position and scroll to see it when the selection changes. Forgive my awful code, but it seems to get the job done. This code belongs in an NSWindow subclass, so self is referring to the window.
// MARK: NSTextViewDelegate
func textViewDidChangeSelection(notification: NSNotification) {
scrollIfCaretIsObscured()
textView.needsDisplay = true // Prevents a selection rendering glitch from sticking around
}
// MARK: My Scrolling Functions
func scrollIfCaretIsObscured() {
let rect = caretRectInWindow()
let y: CGFloat = caretYPositionInWindow() - rect.height
// Todo: Make this consider the text view's ruler height, if present:
let tbHeight: CGFloat
if textView.rulerVisible {
// Ruler is shown:
tbHeight = (try! titlebarHeight()) + textViewRulerHeight
} else {
// Ruler is hidden
tbHeight = try! titlebarHeight()
}
if y <= tbHeight {
scrollToCursor()
}
}
func caretYPositionInWindow() -> CGFloat {
let caretRectInWin: NSRect = caretRectInWindow()
let caretYPosInWin: CGFloat = self.contentView!.frame.height - caretRectInWin.origin.y
return caretYPosInWin
}
func caretRectInWindow() -> CGRect {
// My own version of something based off of an old, outdated
// answer on stack overflow.
// Credit: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6948914/nspopover-below-caret-in-nstextview
let caretRect: NSRect = textView.firstRectForCharacterRange(textView.selectedRange(), actualRange: nil)
let caretRectInWin: NSRect = self.convertRectFromScreen(caretRect)
return caretRectInWin
}
/// Scrolls to the current caret position inside the text view.
/// - Parameter textView: The specified text view to work with.
func scrollToCursor() {
let caretRectInScreenCoords = textView.firstRectForCharacterRange(textView.selectedRange(), actualRange: nil)
let caretRectInWindowCoords = self.convertRectFromScreen(caretRectInScreenCoords)
let caretRectInTextView = textView.convertRect(caretRectInWindowCoords, fromView: nil)
textView.scrollRectToVisible(caretRectInTextView)
}
enum WindowErrors: ErrorType {
case CannotFindTitlebarHeight
}
/// Calculates the combined height of the titlebar and toolbar.
/// Don't try this at home.
func titlebarHeight() throws -> CGFloat {
// Try the official way first:
if self.titlebarAccessoryViewControllers.count > 0 {
let textViewInspectorBar = self.titlebarAccessoryViewControllers[0].view
if let titlebarAccessoryClipView = textViewInspectorBar.superview {
if let view = titlebarAccessoryClipView.superview {
if let titleBarView = view.superview {
let titleBarHeight: CGFloat = titleBarView.frame.height
return titleBarHeight
}
}
}
}
throw WindowErrors.CannotFindTitlebarHeight
}
Hope this helps!