Jun 02 2008
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How to tell if a Mac OS X application is “Cocoa” or “Carbon”
There are two ways that software developers can create Macintosh applications — known as Carbon and Cocoa. As has been said many times before, it doesn’t really matter to users if an application is Carbon or Cocoa, although developers do tend to prefer one or the other when writing applications.
A quick way to identify Carbon and Cocoa applications is to drag them to the bottom of the screen.
- Carbon applications will not let you drag their title bar off the bottom edge of the screen.
- Cocoa applications will let you drag the title bar partially off the bottom of the screen, but as soon as you let go of the mouse, it will bounce back into view.
This isn’t always accurate, as some well-known Carbon applications (the Finder) have Cocoa-like behavior.
And since it’s possible for Cocoa applications to call Carbon and vice-versa, you might say that many apps are not entirely Cocoa or Carbon, but a mix of the two.
