How To Minimize Application To System Tray In C#

Now when the NotifyIcon control is properly set, we need to alter the application's behavior.

Minimizing To System Tray

When a system tray is used, the typical behavior is that the application minimizes to the system tray instead of the Taskbar. Therefore, the form's resize event is the one we need to pay attention to. What we basically need to do is check whether the form has been minimized and if so, hide it from the Taskbar and set the NotifyIcon's visibility to True to display it in the system tray.

private void Form1_Resize(object sender, EventArgs e)  
{  
     //if the form is minimized  
     //hide it from the task bar  
     //and show the system tray icon (represented by the NotifyIcon control)  
     if (this.WindowState == FormWindowState.Minimized)  
     {  
          Hide();  
          notifyIcon.Visible = true;                  
     }  
}

So far so good, our simple WebForms application can be minimized to the system tray with just a few lines of code. But how do we bring the application back to life when minimized? Simply by responding to one of the click events of the NotifyIcon control. We will choose the MouseDoubleClick event and in its response we will un-minimize the application, show it on the Taskbar once again and hide the system tray icon.

private void notifyIcon_MouseDoubleClick(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)  
{  
     Show();  
     this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;  
     notifyIcon.Visible = false;  
}

Now, we have successfully integrated the system tray icon into our application. When minimized, a neat icon is shown along with some information text when we hover the mouse over the icon.

Image 03: application icon show in the system tray

Adding the BalloonTip

Adding some handy information in the form of a balloon tip is as simple as filling in a few related properties and calling the ShowBallonTip method with the timespan in a form of milliseconds. This specifies how long the balloon tip will be shown. As you may have guessed, the right place to call this method is the resize event.

There are 3 properties related to the balloon tip, the title, the actual text and an icon (none/error/info/warning).

Image 04: BalloonTip related properties

notifyIcon.ShowBalloonTip(1000);  

Image 05: Balloon tip in action

Note: If you leave the BalloonTipTitle blank, the BalloonTipIcon won't be shown.

Summary

System tray is a great alternative of a standard application's behavior when it is being minimized. Instead of minimizing to the Taskbar a system tray is used with a smaller icon that doesn’t bother the user’s view. Still, the application is quickly accessible.

The System tray is suited for applications that run in the background to perform its tasks and the user’s cooperation is decreased to a minimum. We use the NotifyIcon control to implement it.