Show a Balloon notification

Question

I'm trying to use the below code to show a Balloon notification. I've verified that it's being executed by using breakpoints. It's also showing no errors.

What should I do to debug this since it's not throwing errors and not showing the balloon?

private void showBalloon(string title, string body)
{
    NotifyIcon notifyIcon = new NotifyIcon();
    notifyIcon.Visible = true;

    if (title != null)
    {
        notifyIcon.BalloonTipTitle = title;
    }

    if (body != null)
    {
        notifyIcon.BalloonTipText = body;
    }

    notifyIcon.ShowBalloonTip(30000);
}

Answer 1

You have not actually specified an icon to display in the task bar. Running your code in LINQPad, by simply adding notifyIcon.Icon = SystemIcons.Application before the call to ShowBalloonTip I was able to get the tip to be displayed. Also note that you should call Dispose when you are done with your NotifyIcon instance.

Answer 2

ShowBalloonnTip takes the number of milliseconds. 3 milliseconds might be too fast for you to even see. Try something more like 3000

You might need to pass a component model to the contructor. It's what I see in all the examples. Sorry been a long time since I've used it. See first answer here:

NotifyIcon not showing

Answer 3

See the below source code.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Drawing;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace ShowToolTip
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void btBallonToolTip_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            ShowBalloonTip();
            this.Hide();
        }

        private void ShowBalloonTip()
        {
            Container bpcomponents = new Container();
            ContextMenu contextMenu1 = new ContextMenu();

            MenuItem runMenu = new MenuItem();
            runMenu.Index = 1;
            runMenu.Text = "Run...";
            runMenu.Click += new EventHandler(runMenu_Click);

            MenuItem breakMenu = new MenuItem();
            breakMenu.Index = 2;
            breakMenu.Text = "-------------";

            MenuItem exitMenu = new MenuItem();
            exitMenu.Index = 3;
            exitMenu.Text = "E&xit";

            exitMenu.Click += new EventHandler(exitMenu_Click);

            // Initialize contextMenu1
            contextMenu1.MenuItems.AddRange(
                        new System.Windows.Forms.MenuItem[] { runMenu, breakMenu, exitMenu });

            // Initialize menuItem1

            this.ClientSize = new System.Drawing.Size(0, 0);
            this.Text = "Ballon Tootip Example";

            // Create the NotifyIcon.
            NotifyIcon notifyIcon = new NotifyIcon(bpcomponents);

            // The Icon property sets the icon that will appear
            // in the systray for this application.
            string iconPath = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location) + @"\setup-icon.ico";
            notifyIcon.Icon = new Icon(iconPath);

            // The ContextMenu property sets the menu that will
            // appear when the systray icon is right clicked.
            notifyIcon.ContextMenu = contextMenu1;

            notifyIcon.Visible = true;

            // The Text property sets the text that will be displayed,
            // in a tooltip, when the mouse hovers over the systray icon.
            notifyIcon.Text = "Morgan Tech Space BallonTip Running...";
            notifyIcon.BalloonTipText = "Morgan Tech Space BallonTip Running...";
            notifyIcon.BalloonTipTitle = "Morgan Tech Space";
            notifyIcon.ShowBalloonTip(1000);
        }

        void exitMenu_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            this.Close();
        }

        void runMenu_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            MessageBox.Show("BallonTip is Running....");
        }
    }
}

Answer 4

Matthew identified the issue, but I still struggled to put all the pieces together. So I thought a concise example that works in LINQPad as-is would be helpful (and presumably elsewhere). Just reference the System.Windows.Forms assembly, and paste this code in.

var notification = new System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon()
{
    Visible = true,
    Icon = System.Drawing.SystemIcons.Information,
    // optional - BalloonTipIcon = System.Windows.Forms.ToolTipIcon.Info,
    // optional - BalloonTipTitle = "My Title",
    BalloonTipText = "My long description...",
};

// Display for 5 seconds.
notification.ShowBalloonTip(5000);

// This will let the balloon close after it's 5 second timeout
// for demonstration purposes. Comment this out to see what happens
// when dispose is called while a balloon is still visible.
Thread.Sleep(10000);

// The notification should be disposed when you don't need it anymore,
// but doing so will immediately close the balloon if it's visible.
notification.Dispose();

Answer 5

Take a look at the example here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.notifyicon.aspx

I see some distinct differences between it an your code, there are many pieces you're leaving out such as creating a ComponentModelContainer and passing that into the NotifyIcon's constructor.