Windows Forms: Hide and Show desktop icons in C#

How to hide desktop icons programmatically?

You can use the Win32 API function to hide and show desktop icons in c#.

First of all, you should create a simple GUI that allows you to hide and display all the icons on the screen as shown below.

After you finish designing your form, you need open your form code behind, then add ShowWindow and FindWindowEx methods as shown below.

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern bool ShowWindow(IntPtr hWnd, int nCmdShow);
[DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
static extern IntPtr FindWindowEx(IntPtr hwndParent, IntPtr hwndChildAfter, string lpszClass, string lpszWindow);

The DLLImport ("user32.dll") must have the name of C++ and Parentheses indicate that we are using an attribute.

Adding a click event handler to the Show button allows you to show desktop icons.

private void btnShow_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    IntPtr hWnd = FindWindowEx(IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero, "Progman", null);
    ShowWindow(hWnd, 5);
}

Finally, Add the click event hanlder to the Hide button allows you to hide desktop icons.

private void btnHide_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    IntPtr hWnd = FindWindowEx(IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero, "Progman", null);
    ShowWindow(hWnd, 0);
}

and don't forget to include the namespaces below to your form.

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Windows.Forms;

Through this c# example, i hope so you can easily hide or show desktop icons programmatically in c# windows forms application.