How can I bring the application window to the fore?

Question

How to bring the application window to the fore? For example, my application needs attention.

This is for my personal program. I need this functionality.

This is what I got. But it does NOT work 100% times.

public void BringToFrontToEnterCaptha() { if (InvokeRequired) { Invoke(new Action(BringToFrontToEnterCaptha)); } else { this.TopMost = true; this.Focus(); this.BringToFront(); this.textBox1.Focus(); this.textBox1.Text = string.Empty; System.Media.SystemSounds.Beep.Play(); } } public void BringToBackAfterEnterCaptha() { if (InvokeRequired) { Invoke(new Action(BringToBackAfterEnterCaptha)); } else { this.TopMost = false; } } 

And I call them from the background worker.

 BringToFrontToEnterCaptha(); while (!ready) { Thread.Sleep(100); } BringToBackAfterEnterCaptha(); Thread.Sleep(300); 

And after clicking the Accept button, bool ready is true.

I work great, but not always.

Answer 1

Use Control.BringToFront :

 myForm.BringToFront(); 

Answer 2

Here is a snippet of code that worked for me

 this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Minimized; this.Show(); this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal; 

It always displays the desired window in front of everyone else.

Answer 3

As long as I agree with everyone, this is not good behavior, here is the code:

 [DllImport("User32.dll")] public static extern Int32 SetForegroundWindow(int hWnd); SetForegroundWindow(Handle.ToInt32()); 

Update

David is completely right, for completeness, I include a paragraph with a +1 mark for David!

• The process is the front process.
• The process was started foreground.
• The process received the last entry of the event.
• There is no foreground process.
• The foreground process is debugged.
• The foreground is not locked (see LockSetForegroundWindow).
• The foreground lock timeout has expired (see SPI_GETFOREGROUNDLOCKTIMEOUT in SystemParametersInfo).
• There is no menu.

Answer 4

Use the methods Form.Activate() or Form.Focus() .

Answer 5

it works:

 if (WindowState == FormWindowState.Minimized) WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal; else { TopMost = true; Focus(); BringToFront(); TopMost = false; } 

Answer 6

Before I stumbled upon this post, I came up with this solution - switch the TopMost property:

 this.TopMost = true; this.TopMost = false; 

I have this code in my form constructor, for example:

 public MyForm() { //... // Brint-to-front hack this.TopMost = true; this.TopMost = false; //... } 

Answer 7

I use SwitchToThisWindow to bring the application to the forefront, as in this example:

 static class Program { [DllImport("User32.dll", SetLastError = true)] static extern void SwitchToThisWindow(IntPtr hWnd, bool fAltTab); /// <summary> /// The main entry point for the application. /// </summary> [STAThread] static void Main() { bool createdNew; int iP; Process currentProcess = Process.GetCurrentProcess(); Mutex m = new Mutex(true, "XYZ", out createdNew); if (!createdNew) { // app is already running... Process[] proc = Process.GetProcessesByName("XYZ"); // switch to other process for (iP = 0; iP < proc.Length; iP++) { if (proc[iP].Id != currentProcess.Id) SwitchToThisWindow(proc[0].MainWindowHandle, true); } return; } Application.EnableVisualStyles(); Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false); Application.Run(new form()); GC.KeepAlive(m); } 

Answer 8

My advice: do not do this! Applications requiring attention should flicker the taskbar , and not jump before what the user was doing, and start intercepting keys and mouseclicks. This is VERY bad form.

I was going to post this as a comment, but this is too important for the problem.