How to add a CALayer to an NSView on Mac OS X

First of all, you don't want to add a layer in the drawRect: method of a view, this gets called automatically by the system and you'd probably end up with a lot more layers than you actually want. initWithFrame: or initWithCoder: (for views that are in a nib file) are better places to initialize your layer hierarchy.

Furthermore, NSViews don't have a root layer by default (this is quite different from UIView on iOS). There are basically two kinds of NSViews that use a layer: layer-backed views and layer-hosting views. If you want to interact with the layer directly (add sublayers etc.), you need to create a layer-hosting view.

To do that, create a CALayer and call the view's setLayer: method. Afterwards, call setWantsLayer:. The order is important, if you'd call setWantsLayer: first, you'd actually create a layer-backed view.

You need to make a call to the "setWantsLayer" method.

Check out the following documentation for the description for setWantsLayer: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/Classes/NSView_Class/Reference/NSView.html

In a nutshell, your view needs to be layer-hosting view. Because it is a layer-hosting view, you should interact with the layer, and NOT interact with the view itself and don't add subviews to it.

[self setLayer:[CALayer new]];
[self setWantsLayer:YES];     // the order of setLayer and setWantsLayer is crucial!
[self.layer setBackgroundColor:[backgroundColor CGColor]];