I’m trying to show a splash screen in applicationWillFInishLaunching:, but it doesn’t actually appear until applicationDidFinishLaunching: seconds later. I’ve done all I can think of to make it show up:

[NSApp activateIgnoringOtherApps: YES];
[splashWindow orderFrontRegardless];
[splashWindow display];

Is there anything else I can do to make the window draw?

Try putting this after your orderFront call:

[[NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] runUntilDate:[NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceNow:0.01]];

The runloop basically has to do at least one iteration before the new window will actually be mapped to the screen.

- Jon

On Sep 6, 2018, at 1:39 PM, Jon Gotow <gotow@...> wrote:

Try putting this after your orderFront call:

[[NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] runUntilDate:[NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceNow:0.01]];

The runloop basically has to do at least one iteration before the new window will actually be mapped to the screen.

Tried that, no change.

- Jon

On Sep 6, 2018, at 12:17 PM, James Walker <list2@...> wrote:

I’m trying to show a splash screen in applicationWillFInishLaunching:, but it doesn’t actually appear until applicationDidFinishLaunching: seconds later. I’ve done all I can think of to make it show up:

[NSApp activateIgnoringOtherApps: YES];
[splashWindow orderFrontRegardless];
[splashWindow display];

Is there anything else I can do to make the window draw?

Hmph - now that you mention it, there's no current runloop at that point - the app is still launching. So [NSRunloop currentRunLoop] is probably returning nil. You could grabbing mainRunLoop and running that, but I don't know what impact that's going to have during the app launch process.

- Jon

On Sep 6, 2018, at 2:03 PM, Jon Gotow <gotow@...> wrote:

Hmph - now that you mention it, there's no current runloop at that point - the app is still launching. So [NSRunloop currentRunLoop] is probably returning nil. You could grabbing mainRunLoop and running that, but I don't know what impact that's going to have during the app launch process.

- Jon

I wondered about that myself, and logged out the values of [NSRunloop currentRunLoop] and [NSRunloop mainRunLoop]. They showed the same non-nil value.

On Sep 6, 2018, at 5:13 PM, Quincey Morris <quinceymorris@...> wrote:

On Sep 6, 2018, at 11:17 , James Walker <list2@...> wrote:

I’m trying to show a splash screen in applicationWillFInishLaunching:, but it doesn’t actually appear until applicationDidFinishLaunching: seconds later.

Coming at this from the other side, why does it take enough seconds to get from willFinishLaunching to didFinishLaunching that you care? If you can reduce that time a bit, maybe you don’t have to solve the original problem.

IIRC from the last time this topic was discussed, getting windows displayed earlier than didFinishLaunching is pretty treacherous.

I come here looking for a simple solution, and you try to make me THINK? That’s hardly fair. :-)

I managed to move some work onto a different thread, and fix a place where my main thread was getting blocked for a while. Though it would still be nice to solve this mystery.

New clue: if I run the app in Xcode using the option "Launch application without state restoration", then the splash window appears sooner.