Trouble matching the vibrant background of a Yosemite NSMenuItem containing a custom view

Question

I am attempting to add a custom view to an NSMenuItem in the OS X 10.10 Yosemite menu bar.

The custom view is simply an NSView background with an NSTextField “label”

Answer 1

I think I have less "hackish" solution. It's indeed caused by the new NSVisualEffectView and Vibrancy stuff in Yosemite. I learned that there are quite complex rules how views are drawn when they're subviews of NSVisualEffectView. It was discussed on WWDC 2014 in session 220 - Adopting Advanced Features of the New UI of OS X Yosemite. I recommend you to watch this session video to get comprehensive explanation.

Shortly, it seems that your problem may be caused by colors you use. There are two new system colors - [NSColor labelColor] and [NSColor secondaryLabelColor]. These two are automatically adjusted when drawn inside NSVisualEffectView. Also, your custom view should support Vibrancy effect. This is done by overriding - (BOOL)allowsVibrancy method and returning YES.

Please check the session video mentioned above or download session slides in PDF to get precise information. This stuff is discussed from slide 124 in PDF and near the middle of the video.