electron-named-image v2.0.0

This is deprecated because this functionality is now in Electron core.

See https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/10727

electron-named-image

Native node.js addon that returns Objective-C [NSImage imageNamed] calls as a PNG buffer, which simplifies using default macOS images in Electron apps.

Install

npm install electron-named-image

While macOS is currently the only supported platform, this module can be safely installed and used on non-macOS platforms. (No need to wrap your require in a conditional statement or other work-arounds).

What? Why?

This lets you use default macOS images/icons with little effort. So you can set up your TouchBar to look like this:

(Note the macOS TouchBar icons in there in between the defaults)

...or your menu to look like this:

(Note the icons on the menu items)

...without having to manually gather together a bunch of image files. These images/icons are included as a part of macOS and available to Objective-C and Swift via the NSImage API. This module allows you to use it via Javascript.

Sample usage:

new TouchBarButton({
  icon: nativeImage.createFromBuffer(
    namedImage.getImageNamed('NSTouchBarRefreshTemplate')
  )
})

Menu.setApplicationMenu(Menu.buildFromTemplate([
  {
    label: 'My App',
    submenu: [
      { 
        label: 'Empty Trash',
        icon: nativeImage.createFromBuffer(
          namedImage.getImageNamed('NSTrashFull')
        ).resize({ width: 20 })
      }
    ]
  }
]));

For all possible "named images" on macOS, see this.

If you specify an invalid named image or are using it on a macOS version that pre-dates NSTouchBar* icons, you'll get back an empty buffer. For example:

namedImage.getImageNamed('invalid').length // => 0
namedImage.getImageNamed('NSTrashFull').length // => 9166

The empty buffer will work as expected with Electron's nativeImage module, you just won't have any actual image.

All of the NSTouchBar* named images have been outputted as PNGs to the images folder which you can use as well just by manually saving and importing them into your app.

Compiling for use in an Electron app

See https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/master/docs/tutorial/using-native-node-modules.md for the easy, right way. Or you can also npm install -g node-gyp and then run the same compile-for-electron script I have in the package.json in the root of this module's folder.

Inspired by https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/9414