Hiding forms on startup: why doesn't this.Hide() hide my form?

Question

I wanted to hide the main window of my app on startup, so I put this in the constructor:

this.Hide();

This doesn't hide my form though. It seems like I can only get buttons to hide the form. Am I doing something wrong here?

Answer 1

you can use this line of code. It wont hide it, but it will be minimized:

this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Minimized;

in addition, if you don't want it showing on the task bar either, you can add this line:

this.ShowInTaskbar = false;

But why do you create the form if you don't want it to be visible in the first place?

Answer 2

If you would rather use this.Hide or this.Show you can do this

protected override void OnShown(EventArgs e)
{
    base.OnShown(e);
    this.Hide();
}

Answer 3

Just override the OnVisibleChanged method and change the visibility of the form in there, something like this:

protected override void OnVisibleChanged(EventArgs e)
{
    base.OnVisibleChanged(e);
    this.Visible = false;
}

And that's it! Simple and clean.