Hiding/Displaying NSToolbarItem's

Question

I have an application with many NSToolbarItems. Only 5 or so are needed at any one time so it seems like the best way to fit them on the screen and make them easy to get to is to hide/display only the NSToolbarItems depending on the context.

I can't find either through google or in the Apple doc's how to do this. Is there a way? (Short of actually writing a custom nstoolbar!)

NB: I am worried this is a little bit "anti" the user interface standards, but I cannot think of a better way to handle large number of buttons that are all needed by the user, except maybe a tool window thingy.

Answer 1

You can go through all the items with -[NSToolbar items], and remove unwanted ones with -[NSToolbar removeItemAtIndex:], Although apple does say this:

Typically, you should not call this method (-[NSToolbar removeItemAtIndex:]); you should let the user reconfigure the toolbar.

Usually you just disable the toolbar items that can't be used in the current context.