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C# - How to Minimize an Application to the Taskbar Tray [Beginner]


One very convenient features in windows is the Taskbar. To make it even better, those little icons can make something so "out of the way" that you can forget what is even down there. But, sometimes you want your applications to hang down there, out of the way, doing something that requires little attention. You can even make some notification bubbles show up if you want.

Today I am going to be using Visual Studio Express 2008, and luckily this makes things really easy. I am assuming that you know how to create a new project, so once you have one open, we can get started. I named my "HideTaskBar", but as always, any name is fine.

This whole process revolves around an object named NotifyIcon. Like most .NET objects, this one is designed to make the job easier. With it we can give our application its very own cute icon in the taskbar, and notify our users of important information. Of course, to start you need to add the object to your form, so go ahead and do that. The object is a common control.

The NotifyIcon's Properties

The first thing you absolutely must do is set the Icon property. This can be found in the properties window when you have the NotifyIcon object selected. If you don't, nothing will show up in the taskbar tray.

Moving on to our code, the first thing we need to do is "hide" the form when we minimize it. To do this, we simply tie the action to the resize event. This is crude at best, but for this tutorial it gets the point across:
if (WindowState == FormWindowState.Minimized)
  Hide();
 
As I stated above, this simple code goes in the resize event of the form. We are checking to see if the form is minimized, if it is, we hide it. It's that simple. Now we have to setup an "un-minimize" event that will show our app when we double click the icon. If you take a look at the NotifyIcon object, you will notice a DoubleClick event. How convenient, huh?

What we have to do on the event is show the form, then set its WindowState to normal:
Show();
WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;
 
Again, that simple. But, we can do a little more. How about adding a some notifications? Yeap, the NotifyIcon object can do that as well. Windows calls them bubbles, and you can access them through the object. Let's go ahead and add one to notify us of the minimization of the app:
if (WindowState == FormWindowState.Minimized)
{
  Hide();

  notifyIcon1.BalloonTipTitle = "APP Hidden";
  notifyIcon1.BalloonTipText = "Your application has been minimized to the taskbar.";
  notifyIcon1.ShowBalloonTip(3000);
}
 
This will make a balloon tip pop up and notify us from the taskbar. As you can imagine the possibilities are pretty endless as far as the NotifyIcon object goes. You can use this pretty much anywhere, so any action can have a balloon tip. In fact, no one even said you have to use the notification icon for minimizing.

Now we know what is going on. 

With that, I wrap up this tutorial. I have showed you how to minimize your app to a taskbar icon, and even show a balloon tip from that icon. Now you can add these functions to your app.

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