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Introduction

Minimizing a window to the system tray makes your application somewhat cool, isn’t it? This functionality can be really useful when you want to run an application in the background, for example, chat applications, anti-viruses, and programs that monitor the state of your machine.

Background

This article requires you to have basic knowledge of programming Windows Forms in C#.

Using the Code

Now, let’s see what we need to include this functionality in any Windows application. There are a few very simple steps towards achieving this.

1. Create a new Windows Application project using Visual Studio.
2. You’ll have a default Form opened up for you. From the Toolbox, add a NotifyIcon control to your form.
3. Handle the form’s Resize event. In this handler, you override the basic functionality of the Resize event to make the form minimize to the system tray and not to the taskbar. This can be done by doing the following in your form’s Resize event handler:
• Check whether the form’s WindowState property is set to FormWindowState.Minimized.
• If yes, hide your form, enable the NotifyIcon object, and show the balloon tip that shows some information.
• Once the WindowState becomes FormWindowState.Normal, disable the NotifyIcon object by setting its Visible property to false.
4. Now, you want the window to reappear when you double click on the NotifyIcon object in the taskbar. For this, handle the NotifyIcon’s MouseDoubleClick event. Here, you show the form using the Show() method.

Remember to set the notifyIcon1.Icon property to a valid Icon resource object; otherwise, the system tray will not show any icon, and your window will never return to the foreground.

I have added some code below to get things started:

//  The NotifyIcon object
private System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon notifyIcon1;
this.notifyIcon1.Icon = 
  ((System.Drawing.Icon)(resources.GetObject("notifyIcon1.Icon")));


private void TrayMinimizerForm_Resize(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
     notifyIcon1.BalloonTipTitle = "Minimize to Tray App";
     notifyIcon1.BalloonTipText = "You have successfully minimized your form.";

     if (FormWindowState.Minimized == this.WindowState)
     {
          notifyIcon1.Visible = true;
          notifyIcon1.ShowBalloonTip(500);
          this.Hide();    
     }
     else if (FormWindowState.Normal == this.WindowState)
     {
          notifyIcon1.Visible = false;
     }
}

private void notifyIcon1_MouseDoubleClick(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
     this.Show();
     this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;
}

Points of Interest

Some window applications need to stay running as long as the computer is on; for example, Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo chat etc., need to run all the time unless they are explicitly terminated. This concept of minimizing windows to the system tray is very helpful when too many open windows crowd up the taskbar.

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Restoring maximized state, Vozzie2 5:41 6 Sep '09   It works fine but doesn't restore a window to maximized when it came from a maximized state. I made some changes to solve this,... in VB.Net but it should't be a problem to translate it to C#... Private Sub NotifyIcon1_MouseDoubleClick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs) Handles NotifyIcon1.MouseDoubleClick Me.Show() ' restore SendMessage WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_RESTORE,...? Const WM_SYSCOMMAND As UInt32 = &H112UI Const SC_RESTORE As Integer = &HF120 SendMessage(Me.Handle, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_RESTORE, 0) 'Me.WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal End Sub Private Sub Form1_Resize(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Resize If Me.WindowState = FormWindowState.Minimized Then NotifyIcon1.Visible = True Me.Hide() Else NotifyIcon1.Visible = False End If End Sub <System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("user32.dll")> _ Private Shared Function SendMessage(ByVal hWnd As IntPtr, ByVal uMsg As UInt32, ByVal wParam As Integer, ByVal lParam As Integer) As Integer End Function With regards,... It feels good to learn and achieve Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink question maditude 16:23 29 Mar '09   First, thanks for your article - was just what I was looking for! Here's a minor touch to your example, so that the control-box [X] button also minimizes-to-tray: 1) add a "bool keep_running = true;" line to the form's code. 2) add a "keep_running = false;" line to the exitToolStripMenuItem_Click() handler. 3) wire up a handler for the form's FormClosing event. private void TrayMinimizerForm_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e) { if (keep_running) { WindowState = FormWindowState.Minimized; e.Cancel = true; } } Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: question Elroy Dsilva 5:52 6 Sep '09   Yeah. Thanks. That's another way to do it. Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. - Voltaire Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Good job danzar 18:27 19 Dec '08   Very good job. Its good clean and simple. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 5.00/5 Switch PIEBALDconsult 7:42 8 Jul '08   Why not use switch ( this.WindowState ) ? Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: Switch Elroy Dsilva 7:52 8 Jul '08   Thanks for the question. Yes, you can very well use switches instead of "If-else" if you feel if-else looks ugly. However, they boil down to the same thing(condition check). Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 5.00/5

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