Does Qt support Mac-style pop-out widgets?

[jdxjohn]

I am not a Mac developer does anyone know what these kind of controls are called:

Here this pops out from a button and is able to extend beyond the parent/main window, but if you click outside the popout widget it automatically disappears. I'm not familiar with this kind of toolbar widget in WinAPI and as we're developing a cross-platform application based on an existing Mac application, I'd like to know if Qt can provide something similar/use these native widgets in a cross-platform way?

Thanks.

[jdxjohn]

OK so in Mac speak these are "popovers" https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/windows-and-views/popovers/

Does Qt support them, and if so what is the Windows equivalent? If not, what is the closest cross-platform alternative - it's just neat they disappear when you click away.

[mrjj]

Hi
Qt do not have such control/widget. (as far as i know)
For a cross platform solution, i think you would have to make a custom widget.
Technically its similar to a QComboBox that also allows to go out side parents area and
will close on click outside. It uses a event filter to be able to close if click outside.

so you could go dig around in its code
https://code.woboq.org/qt5/qtbase/src/widgets/widgets/qcombobox.cpp.html

to be inspired.
Basically it would be a frame less floating window and some eventfilter to
obtain a similar effect.

[mpergand]

You can make your own custom widget based on Qt::PopUp window flag.
Here my own widget constructor:

static const int ArrowSize=13;

PopupWindow::PopupWindow(QWidget *parent) : QWidget(parent)
{
    setWindowFlags(Qt::FramelessWindowHint|Qt::NoDropShadowWindowHint|Qt::Popup);
    setAttribute(Qt::WA_TranslucentBackground);
    setContentsMargins(ArrowSize+1,ArrowSize+1,ArrowSize+1,ArrowSize+1);

    oContentWidget=new ContentWidget(this);
    oContentWidget->setMinimumSize(QSize(100,100));
    oContentWidget->move(ArrowSize+1,ArrowSize+1);
    oContentWidget->setSizePolicy(QSizePolicy::Fixed,QSizePolicy::Fixed);

     // widget shadow
    pShadowEffect = new QGraphicsDropShadowEffect();
    pShadowEffect->setBlurRadius(18);
    pShadowEffect->setColor(ShadowColor[ShadowColor_Active]);
    pShadowEffect->setOffset(QPoint(1,4));
    setGraphicsEffect(pShadowEffect);
}

You need to define an AnchorPoint and a AnchorWidget to position the popup correctly. For ex:

void PopupWindow::showWithAnchor(QWidget* anchorWidget, Qt::AnchorPoint anchorPt)
{
...
}

Some work required ;)

[jdxjohn]

Thanks, this is most helpful. It seems this is a Mac-native control so it makes sense Qt doesn't support directly.

[SGaist]

Hi,

It's a NSPopover. However you might be able to integrate it into your Qt application.

Here you have an example on how to show on programmatically using Objective-C.