stop auto hiding tray notification icon

Question

Whenever my windows forms application runs for the first time, the tray icon stays visible for about less than a minute, and then it autohides, what can i do to make it stick and not auto hide ?

I tried searching and can't find any useful information.

It appears that this is the default behavior for windows 7 and above, I wonder if there is a way to override that behavior from inside my application ?

Answer 1

There is no supported programmatic way to override the system's default show/hide notification icon behavior. MSDN:

When an icon is added to the notification area on Windows 7, it is added to the overflow section of the notification area by default. This area contains notification area icons that are active, but not visible in the notification area. Only the user can promote an icon from the overflow to the notification area, although in certain circumstances the system can temporarily promote an icon into the notification area as a short preview (under one minute).

Emphasis mine.

Answer 2

As you've no doubt read the discussion in the comments, there is indeed no supported way of doing this. That said, if you're determined and you have the time to do a little digging, I'd recommend using a few tools to bypass the documentation and looking at what's actually happening under the hood with the notification setting. There may be appropriate documentation on this but I've not found it.

The brute force approach would be to use SysInternal's RegMon tool to view all registry access . If you tie it to the "Explorer.exe" process, you will see all relevant information on what the desktop and start bar are doing, including any file access. Make no mistake - this is a brute force approach and will require a lot of effort and digging. Once tied to the explorer.exe process you can make changes to the notificaiton settings. Viewing and investigating the changes made by the process will give you an idea of where the relevant settings are stored and how. The downside is that there's going to be a lot of data to trawl through and investigate to find out what's going on but it can be done. This is not an ideal solution but if no other is forthcoming you're left with the rough and ready approach I'm afraid. It comes down to how much effort you want to put into a solution to this.