C# Slackers: Animated Tray Icon in C#

The .NET Framework makes it easy to show a system tray icon with the NotifyIcon control. You simply need to add this control to a form, supply an icon by setting the Icon property, and, optionally, you can add a linked context menu through the ContextMenu property. The NotifyIcon control automatically displays its context menu when it's right-clicked, unlike most other controls.

You can animate a system tray icon by simply swapping the icon periodically. For example, the following program uses eight icons, each of which shows a moon graphic in a different stage of fullness. By moving from one image to another, the illusion of animation is created.

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Drawing;

public class AnimatedSystemTrayIcon : System.Windows.Forms.Form {

    // (Designer code omitted.)

    Icon[] images;
    int offset = 0;

    private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e) {
    
        // Load the basic set of eight icons.
        images = new Icon[8];
        images[0] = new Icon("moon01.ico");
        images[1] = new Icon("moon02.ico");
        images[2] = new Icon("moon03.ico");
        images[3] = new Icon("moon04.ico");
        images[4] = new Icon("moon05.ico");
        images[5] = new Icon("moon06.ico");
        images[6] = new Icon("moon07.ico");
        images[7] = new Icon("moon08.ico");
    }

    private void timer_Elapsed(object sender, 
      System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e) {
    
        // Change the icon.
        // This event handler fires once every second (1000 ms).
        notifyIcon.Icon = images[offset];
        offset++;
        if (offset > 7) offset = 0;
    }
}

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