Mac Standalone Applications

Mac Platform Information for Standalone Applications

Max builds universal binary standalone applications on the Mac. The standalone is an application package, which is also a folder that looks like a file in the Finder. Double-clicking on the file's icon launches the application.

Examining the contents of a Mac standalone

Control-click on the standalone application and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu. A new Finder window will open showing the contents of the package.

YourApplication.app [ note: the .app is not shown in the Finder ]

Contents [ folder ]

Frameworks [ folder ] – needed for external object support

Info.plist [ copied from your Info.plist if included in a collective build script ]

YourApplication.mxf [ collective containing your patches ]

MacOS [ folder ]

YourApplication [ actually the Max/MSP Runtime executable ]

support [ folder ] – audio and MIDI support files

Resources [ folder ]

[ custom icon file goes here ]

Including Jitter shader components in your Mac standalone application

Build your application without including any shaders or frameworks in the build script.
The Cg.framework is copied to your standalone automatically if you use either the jit.gl.shader or the jit.gl.slab object.
Copy the jitter-shaders folder from the Cycling '74 folder inside the Max application folder to {Package}/Contents/MacOS/support/jitter-shaders. Be sure to include any shader files that the included shaders use. Many of the included image-processing shaders rely on one of the "passthru" vertex shader programs that reside in the shared folder inside the jitter-shaders folder.

Including Java components in your Macintosh standalone application

Copy the file java/lib/max.jar from the Cycling '74 folder inside the Max application folder to {Package}/Contents/support/java/lib/max.jar
Copy any other necessary jar files (e.g., jitter.jar) to {Package}/Contents/support/java/lib/
Copy any necessary class files from java/classes/*.class in the Cycling '74 folder to {Package}/Contents/support/java/classes/*.class.

Adding a custom icon for a Macintosh standalone application

Create a line with the appicon script keyword in your standalone's build script followed by the full pathname of an icon file you’ve created with Apple's Icon Composer tool or another application that creates these files. This will copy the icon file into the standalone application package's Resources folder.

In some cases, you may need to log out and log back in again before the standalone’s icon will show up.