Can I set an infinite AutoPopDelay for a tooltip in a .NET Windows Forms window?

Question

I have a requirement to not have the standard .NET Windows Forms tooltip automatcially hide - that is, I need them to remain visible until the mouse moves off the control that has the tooltip. I'd like to avoid having to use specific MouseEnter and MouseLeave events for all controls with a tooltip. I'm happy to hear about third-party solutions if they'd solve the problem.

Answer 1

As it has been posted countless times and is known from the .NET Framework early days, you cannot set the AutoPopDelay time higher than an Int16.MaxValue (i.e. 32767) and have it working. Using the tooltip Show() method leads to the same result. Any value higher than 32767 leads the timer to be reset to 5000 ms.

Even an attempt to set the AutomaticDelay to a value that leads to an AutoPopDelay value higher than 32767 will cause the tooltip not to work. Furthermore, using the StopTimer() method doesn't yield any positive results.

The only way I was succesful in displaying a tooltip with infinite timeout was using the tooltip Show() method that passes the displayed position. tooltip.Show(text, control, position). In conclusion, the tooltip control has the most bizarre behavior I have yet encountered in a control and the documentation about setting the delay times is quite misleading.

Answer 2

I was searching for a solution to the problem

1. The popup baloon disappears too fast, not allowing me to read its content
2. The popup baloon does not appear again when hovering into that region.

I found in the forums the following answer, which does not solve Problem2, but lets me read the text for more than the time I need when I set its value to 32766 and is thus - in my opinion - a kind of 'work around':

Actually, I found out my problem was that I assigned a value higher than 32767 (32768 and higher will have an effect of 5 sec) really weird, since AutoPopDelay is supposed to take an Integer (32 bit) as parameter, and 32767 is really a signed 16 bit ...

But I have to admit, it still sucks...

But setting it to 32000 (32 seconds) seems to work better. No clue why this is but maybe it helps someone.

Answer 3

In my application, the tooltip text has to update every 10 seconds. What works for me is to deactivate and activate the tooltip every time this text is updated. When I set the AutoPopDelay to more than 10 seconds, the tooltip will effectively stay forever. So you might use a timer to repeatedly activate and deactivate the tooltip:

private void timer1_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    toolTip1.Active = false;
    toolTip1.Active = true;
}

To minimize the flicker that happens on reactivating the tooltip, set the InitialDelay to 1. When you set the AutoPopDelay to 30000 and the timer interval also to 30000 you'll see a very short flicker only once every 30 seconds. For my application this short flicker is acceptable. Btw, don't forget to turn on the timer! (At first I thought it didn't work, until I discovered I forgot to turn on the timer ;-))

Of course this is a cure for the symptoms and not an elegant solution to the problem.