Question

I’ve been wondering how to do this for ages. I’m creating a little app, and I need to figure out how many apps or windows are displayed in the TaskBar.

I’ve yet to find any info on this at all, I’d appreciate any help at all.

Thank you 🙂

Answer 1

As other’s have said you need to enumerate through the windows using the Win32 EnumWindows function, and get your count that way.

You can also enumerate through processes using Process.GetProcesses(); However windows like explorer windows which are not a separate process will not show up in that list.

int appCount = 0;

public bool EnumerateWindows(IntPtr hwnd, IntPtr lParam)
{
    if (IsWindowVisible(hwnd))
    {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        string text = "";

        GetWindowText(hwnd, sb, 1024);
        text = sb.ToString();

        if (text != string.Empty && text != "Program Manager")
        {
            appCount++;
        }
    }

    return true;
}

private int GetAppCount()
{
    appCount = 0;
    EnumWindows(EnumerateWindows, new IntPtr(0));

    return appCount;
}

internal delegate bool EnumThreadWindowsCallback(IntPtr hwnd, IntPtr lParam);

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
internal static extern bool EnumWindows(EnumThreadWindowsCallback callback, IntPtr lParam);

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
internal static extern bool IsWindowVisible(IntPtr hwnd);

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
internal static extern int GetWindowText(IntPtr hWnd, [Out, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPTStr)] StringBuilder lpString, int nMaxCount);