Cocoa Key Equivalent in Menu is not working

I have created a NSStatusItem and I have assigned two key equivalents within interface builder (Xcode 4.0). These are for the preference menu cmd-, and the quit option cmd-q. Both of these will work when the Menu is highlighted/open but wil开发者_开发问答l not work otherwise even if the application is the foremost. Any ideas on why this is happening or how I can change this?

The operating system passes key events that it doesn't handle to the front application, which compares them to any key equivalents in its main menu and current window. They are not compared to items in the status bar, and since the status bar is actually a different application, it won't matter that your application is in the foreground. When you have the menu open, it is the window in focus. This is why it works in those circumstances.

Since the status item is only active while the menu is open, you need to get the key equivalents using one of two other methods. The first, newer method is to use event taps. I have never used this, so I can't advise on how to set it up. The other, older option, is to use hot keys. This method may become unsupported in the future, but if you are interested I posted an example in this answer.

My guess: your NSMenu is not in the responder chain. If you can figure out how to get it in there, you can probably get this to work.