feat(native): add menu-bar popover and background attention - #682
feat(native): add menu-bar popover and background attention#682Farhan (fkb032) wants to merge 4 commits into
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📋 PR Overview
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🎨 Storybook previewUpdated for cbc6b61 🧭 Story changesCompared to ✏️ Changed stories (2)
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Compile Cocoa notification bookkeeping and geometry helpers only on macOS or in unit tests. This keeps Linux cargo check clean while preserving cross-platform unit coverage.
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| Option | What it gives users | What it costs | Effort to change later |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current (open at current screen) | Simple delivery | User must navigate after every click | Moderate: the attention ID encodes the type already |
| Route to relevant screen | User lands in context immediately | Requires knowing app state at click time | Moderate: map each of the 14 types to a target route |
The taxonomy already encodes the distinct user states, so adding routing is a well-scoped follow-on task. It should be a required milestone before general promotion.
9. The popover window is fixed at 800 × 600 pixels and cannot be resized.
This concern carries forward from the prior review unresolved. The control window supports up to 1800px height, which indicates the UI regularly uses that vertical space. Long AI responses, multi-step build logs, and detailed diff sections may overflow the 600px container. Fixed size is aesthetically correct for a menu-bar popover, but 600px has not been validated against the full content range. At minimum, one multi-step evolution with a non-trivial diff should be run in popover mode before promotion. The unchecked test item in the PR description ("Targeted checks for multi-display/overflow positioning") confirms this is still open.
10. NSUserNotificationCenter (a deprecated macOS API) is retained as the notification backend for popover mode instead of the permission-gated UNUserNotificationCenter.
This concern carries forward from the prior review unchanged. The deprecated API avoids the permission prompt that UNUserNotificationCenter requires, which is a real UX benefit for a developer tool. The #[allow(deprecated)] markers make the choice visible in code review. The risk is that Apple removes the API in a future macOS release without a build-time warning, which would silently stop all popover notifications. There is still no documented migration plan. The decision is defensible for alpha, but a migration path should be written down before general rollout.
11. The floating preview indicator and spinning mascot are disabled in popover mode; system notifications are the only attention signal when the window is hidden.
This concern carries forward from the prior review unchanged. The preview indicator provides a persistent, ambient signal visible across all Spaces. A system notification is point-in-time and dismissible. Once a completion notice is dismissed, there is no persistent reminder that work finished while the user was away. No tray icon badge or menu-bar status mark is added in this PR. For a developer alpha with a small audience this is acceptable, but for general use a persistent indicator would fill the gap. This needs a plan before the flag graduates.
12. Tray left-click toggles the popover open and closed in popover mode; in control mode the left click shows the tray menu as before.
This matches standard macOS menu-bar app conventions. Apps like Bartender, Lungo, and Amphetamine all use tray left-click to toggle their popover. The tray menu still reaches every action (Feedback, Settings, Quit) via right-click or secondary-click in both modes, so no action becomes unreachable. Removing "Open nixmac" from the tray menu in popover mode is correct because the left click already performs that function.
Since the last review
- Still open: Preview indicator suppressed in popover mode with no persistent replacement signal (peek.rs gates the indicator behind shows_detached_indicators() and main.rs skips window creation entirely in popover mode; no tray badge or persistent marker is added)
- Still open: All notification clicks open the popover at its current screen without routing to the relevant context (attention.rs did_activate calls main_window::show() for every owned notification identifier with no per-type screen routing)
- Still open: Popover window fixed at 600px height, unvalidated against multi-step evolve output and long diffs (main.rs still sets max_height = 600.0 and initial_height = 600.0 in popover mode; the PR description has the overflow/positioning test item unchecked)
- Still open: NSUserNotificationCenter is deprecated and may be removed without a build-time warning (attention.rs macos module uses #[allow(deprecated)] throughout with no migration plan documented in code or PR description)
- Still open: No persistent cross-Space signal for users who dismissed the completion notification (No tray badge, menu-bar status item, or persistent indicator added; system notifications remain the sole signal when the window is hidden)
- Still open: Whether opening the popover at the current screen is the intended long-term destination for all notification types (attention.rs did_activate maps all 14 notification types uniformly to main_window::show() with no per-type routing and no design comment about future intent)
- Still open: Whether the 600px height has been validated against multi-step evolve output and long configuration diffs (PR description leaves the targeted overflow/multi-display check unchecked; height constraint is unchanged)
- Still open: Plans for per-type notification preferences to suppress low-signal notices while keeping high-priority ones (No preference system for notification types added; all 14 types fire uniformly when visibility and focus conditions are met)
- Still open: Documented migration plan from NSUserNotificationCenter at a defined macOS release boundary (No migration plan in code or PR description; #[allow(deprecated)] is used as acknowledgment only with no target macOS version or timeline)
Open questions
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Has the 600px fixed height been tested against a multi-step evolution with a non-trivial configuration diff? This is the most concrete usability risk before promotion to general availability.
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Is routing notification clicks to the relevant screen (diff view for ChangesReady, blocker dialog for BuildBlocked, question panel for InputRequired) a planned milestone before the flag exits the developer gate?
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The BuildSucceeded notification fires after both AI-driven and user-initiated builds when the window is dismissed. Is this the intended behavior, or should a build the user explicitly started in a session they were already watching skip the completion notice?
Recommendation
Ship with changes
The new decisions in this iteration are sound: the attention taxonomy, session-ownership drift suppression, escape priority routing, token-based close protocol, and finalize-apply error surfacing are all well-designed and well-tested. The feature remains behind a developer-only flag, so real users are not yet affected by any gap. The changes that need resolution before promotion are the unvalidated 600px fixed height, the missing notification-click context routing, and the absent persistent ambient signal after notification dismissal. None of these block shipping the developer alpha, but all three need concrete plans before the flag graduates to general availability.
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Reviewed commit: c059cfe856
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Thanks, I checked each open question against the branch:
Failure copy is updated: evolution failure says “Your request stopped with an error”; the shared build/restore path says “Build or restore failed” with recovery guidance. Finalization errors retain the distinction that changes may already be active. The full History restore path now also notifies on finalization success or failure. The feature stays a local developer opt-in with an explicit restart requirement. A dedicated preference and migration of the local override belong with wider rollout. Normal-window shortcuts and resizing passed their native checks; dismissing the popover keeps active work running. The latest patch passes 1,412 Rust tests (14 ignored), 454 frontend tests, TypeScript, the frontend build, strict workspace Clippy and all 12 GitHub checks. Native checks use an isolated debug/e2e app with mocked system activation; restore bookkeeping is real. The forced first-lookup failure uses a separate instrumented startup fixture. The PR checklist records the exact scope. |
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Summary
Stacked on helper recovery #681. The base is
fix/helper-recoveryso this diff contains only menu-bar/background-attention changes. Retarget to main after the helper PR merges.Adds an opt-in menu-bar popover so queries and builds can continue while nixmac is hidden, with retained state and actionable native attention for questions, completion, failures and configuration drift.
The change handles tray/Dock/notification reopening, display positioning, and close/Escape routing through dismissible dialogs and Settings. Active work and unsaved editor contents stay mounted. Explicit dismissal returns keyboard focus to another app; normal-window behavior stays within the existing rollout boundary.
Rollout
Off by default. Enable Developer settings by clicking the version seven times under Settings > General, then choose Developer > Feature flags > Menu bar popover > Popover and fully quit/reopen nixmac.
The flag is a persisted local launch-time override,
menu-bar-popover=popover. PostHog does not control it, diagnostics may remain off, and hiding Developer settings does not reset it. Choose Default (control) and restart to return to the normal window.Review fixes
Close fallback ownership now survives failed, false and unanswered dismissal calls. Only the current native close token can hide the popover, and successful hide retires that token. Overlay-first handling and retained editor state stay intact.
Transient launch-mode lookup failures retry without poisoning the cache. Full History restores now notify after finalization succeeds or fails. Failure copy names the failed request or build/restore operation.
Test Plan
cbc6b6146: Escape/Cmd+W/Close focus handoff and retained prompt; History retention and overlay-first Close; rejected/false/unanswered dismissal fallback; delayed close invalidated by reopen; an 8-second unresponsive WebView and recovery. Tray show/hide also passes from a clean launch.cbc6b6146.Native scope: isolated debug/e2e app with local fixtures and mocked system activation. Restore bookkeeping is real. The one-failure startup test uses a separate frontend-copy bootstrap; the original
cbc6b6146bundle was preserved and restored. Release signing, real system activation, display disconnection and additional screen sizes are outside this pass.Standalone Filesystem and the editable NixEditor have no reachable entry point in this build. Their state-retention coverage remains automated; no native presentation claim is made for those surfaces.
Docs
#no-linear