Adding a System tray Icon using C#

Introduction

Windows system tray enables end users to access frequently accessed applications with ease.
.Net framework provides classes and methods to manage our application at system tray easily.
In this article an trying to explain how we can place our application icon in system tray and how to capture the events.

Prerequisites

1.Net framework 2.0 and later version
2.Visual studio 2005 and later version

Adding a notify icon

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private System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon myAppIcon;

myAppIcon.Icon = new Icon(this.GetType(), "icon1.ico");
myAppIcon.Text = "My Application";

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Adding a context menu

For adding context menu we can use the System.Windows.Forms.ContextMenu class.
For adding menu items to the contextmenu we can use System.Windows.Forms.MenuItem class.

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private System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon myAppIcon;
private System.Windows.Forms.ContextMenu contextMenu;
this.contextMenu = new System.Windows.Forms.ContextMenu();
this.myAppIcon.ContextMenu = this.contextMenu;
this.myAppIcon.Icon = new Icon(this.GetType(), "icon1.ico");
this.myAppIcon.Text = "My Application";


this.myAppIcon.Visible = true;
this.myAppIcon.DoubleClick += new System.EventHandler(this.myAppIcon_DoubleClick);
this.contextMenu.MenuItems.AddRange(new System.Windows.Forms.MenuItem[] {
this.menuItemSettings,
this.menuItemEnabled,
this.menuItemQuit});

this.menuItemSettings.Index = 0;
this.menuItemSettings.Text = "&Application Settings";
this.menuItemSettings.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.menuItemSettings_Click);
this.menuItemEnabled.Checked = true;
this.menuItemEnabled.Index = 1;
this.menuItemEnabled.Text = "&Enabled";
this.menuItemEnabled.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.menuItemEnabled_Click);
this.menuItemQuit.Index = 2;
this.menuItemQuit.Text = "&Exit";
this.menuItemQuit.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.menuItemQuit_Click);

{/codecitation}

There is another helpful class System.Management.ManagementEventWatcher which can handle the system tray icon contains two static methods start() stop() to enable and disable the system tray functionality.

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private void StartMonitoring()
{
myAppIcon.Icon = new Icon( this.GetType() , "Enabled.ico" );
myAppIcon.Text = "PriorityMonitor (Enabled)";

if ( ProcessWatcher == null )
{
WqlEventQuery wmiQuery = new WqlEventQuery( "SELECT * FROM __InstanceCreationEvent WITHIN 2 WHERE TargetInstance ISA \"Win32_Process\"" );            
ProcessWatcher = new ManagementEventWatcher( wmiQuery );
ProcessWatcher.EventArrived +=new EventArrivedEventHandler(ProcessWatcher_EventArrived);
}
ProcessWatcher.Start();
}

private void StopMonitoring()
{
myAppIcon.Icon = new Icon( this.GetType() , "Disabled.ico" );
myAppIcon.Text = "PriorityMonitor (Disabled)";

if ( ProcessWatcher == null ) return; // Stop not needed!

ProcessWatcher.Stop();
}

{/codecitation}

Conclusion

In this article i was trying to explain how to add a system tray icon for your .net application as well as how to add a context menu along with the usage of ManagementEventWatcher class. Hope you all liked it. For queries you can reach me at amalhashim@gmail.com

Thank you

Amal