How to remove the dock icon on Mac Tauri?

[billywatkins]

I am trying to remove the dock icon, close the window, and let the app run in the background using Tauri.

I am able to close the window, but I don't know how to remove the app icon after the window is closed.

// Prevents additional console window on Windows in release, DO NOT REMOVE!!
#![cfg_attr(not(debug_assertions), windows_subsystem = "windows")]

#[tauri::command]
fn greet(name: &str) -> String {
    format!("Hello ->, {}!", name)
}

fn main() {
    tauri::Builder::default()
        .setup(|app| {
            // #[cfg(target_os = "macos")]
            // app.set_activation_policy(tauri::ActivationPolicy::Accessory); // this removes the dock icon by default
            Ok(())
        })
        .build(tauri::generate_context!())
        .expect("error while building tauri application")
        .run(|_app_handle, event| match event {
// dock icon should be removed here, but I don't know how, share the app state?
            tauri::RunEvent::ExitRequested { api, .. } => {
                api.prevent_exit();
            }
            _ => {}
        })
}

[FabianLars]

Copy pasting the answer from stackoverflow for visibility:

Tauri doesn't seem to support setting the activation policy after startup, but you can set it yourself at runtime (see the comments and edits to this answer) by calling the AppKit API using the cocoa crate:

use cocoa::appkit::{NSApp, NSApplication, NSApplicationActivationPolicy::*};

unsafe {
    let app = NSApp();
    app.setActivationPolicy_(NSApplicationActivationPolicyAccessory);
}

Inserting this immediately after the call to api.prevent_exit() causes the window to close and the dock icon to disappear, but the program continues running.

It's worth noting that Tauri doesn't expect you to do this, so it may cause other unexpected behavior -- it might be difficult to restore the window state later on, for example.

[billywatkins]

It works, but when the app icon is leaving the dock, there's a wired terminal icon showing up, replacing the default Tauri icon. Is this expected?

Sorry for this noob question; I am completely new to macOS development.

[FabianLars]

I'm not sure to be honest. Does this also happen if you run the app after tauri build? I could imagine that this is dev mode specific with macos falling back to the terminal parent process 🤔

[billywatkins]

I just found out that it's only happening in dev mode and not after building the app, so it's not a problem

[billywatkins]

Hey, sorry to bring this up again, but when I use this approach, the app is not opening from the spotlight search. @FabianLars

[billywatkins]

Just found this open PR tauri-apps/tao#517