How to add icons to the right hand side of NSMenuItem

Question

I'm trying to add some icons to the right hand side of a menu next to a menu item, ideally all right justified. I'm aware that NSMenuItem allows you to add menu items (for instance, see the MenuMadness example). I'm really looking for something like the security / signal strength indicators in the OS X Wifi menu.

One approach that I've seen is to add items to the menu, and use setView to provide an NSView for each item. However, that seems to be more complicated than it should be. Is there a way to just add an icon / multiple icons to the menu?

Answer 1

On the left side of the menu, it's easy, and even possible from Interface Builder.

For the right side, I assume you have read the Apple doc Views in Menu Items . I agree, its far more complicated than it needs to be, with many drawbacks.

Have you considered a hacky workaround?
Just create your menus with no title, and set up an icon that is a very wide icon image, including your title and icon.
You loose the keyboard navigation if the user wants to navigate in your menu by typing the beginning of the menu's title, and it might not work if your titles need to be dynamic, but depending on the context of this feature, it's worth a shot.

Similar to the last item of this menu: