NSApplicationDelegate not working without Storyboard

Question

I\'m attempting to create a macOS application without a storyboard in Xcode 8 (stable) on macOS Sierra. However, my AppDelegate is not even being initiated. Her

Answer 1

In case someone is looking for a Swift version (based on @WarrenBurtons answer).

AppDelegate

@NSApplicationMain
class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate {
    var window: NSWindow?

    func applicationDidFinishLaunching(_ aNotification: Notification) {
        // Insert code here to initialize your application
        window = NSWindow(contentViewController: RootViewController())
        window?.makeKeyAndOrderFront(self)
    }
}

class RootViewController: NSViewController {
    override func loadView() {
      self.view = NSView()
      self.view.frame = NSRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 600, height: 400)
  }
}

NSApplication subclass

import Cocoa

class Application: NSApplication {
    let strongDelegate = AppDelegate()

    override init() {
        super.init()
        self.delegate = strongDelegate
    }

    required init?(coder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }
}

Info.plist entry

    ...
    NSPrincipalClass
    $(PRODUCT_MODULE_NAME).Application
    ...

I've also created a gist for this, that I will keep up to date for new Xcode / Swift versions. https://gist.github.com/florieger/7ac5e7155f6faf18666f92f7d82f6cbc

Edit: Make sure to delete the Main.storyboard / MainMenu.xib, otherwise you might end up with two Windows in the UI Debugger.