How to 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.

Once you've finished designing your form, you need to open your 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);
}

Make sure you have the necessary namespaces added at the top of your C# file as shown below.

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

Another way you can use registry to remove all the icons in the desktop in C# by manipulating the Windows registry.

Go HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced, then add

Name: HideIcons 
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1

Here's a simple example of how you can achieve this in c# code

// Registry key for desktop icons visibility settings
const string desktopIconsKey = @"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced";
// Get the current value of the desktop icons visibility setting
int currentValue = (int)Registry.GetValue(desktopIconsKey, "HideIcons", 0);
// Toggle the value to hide/show desktop icons
int newValue = (currentValue == 0) ? 1 : 0;
// Set the new value
Registry.SetValue(desktopIconsKey, "HideIcons", newValue, RegistryValueKind.DWord);

This program toggles the visibility of desktop icons by changing the value of the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\HideIcons between 0 and 1.

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