VB .Net – Notifications for Windows Taskbar

Every user of Windows has seen the notifications on the Windows Taskbar. They are somehow not pleasant, but sometimes useful with the information they provide. If you want to make use of those in VB .Net, this article would show you how to do it.

Pretty much, the code adds an icon to the Taskbar. Then, once we click with the right button on it, we get a menu with “Start” and “End”. The “Start” option has another option “Ale”, which kindly shows us a messagebox with text “Opa” (which means “grandmother” in German FYI). If we click on the start we get the Welcome message with lorem ipsum text.

That’s all. How to build it? It is simple Windows Form Application with NotifyIcon and ContextMenuStrip:

It is important to set an icon for the NotifyIcon and to associate its “ContextMenuStrip” to ContextMenuStrip1, to make it work:

The rest of the code is here:

Public Class Form1

    Private Sub NotifyIcon1_MouseDown(sender As Object, e As MouseEventArgs) Handles NotifyIcon1.MouseDoubleClick
        If e.Button = Windows.Forms.MouseButtons.Left Then
            Using my_form As New Form1()
                my_form.ShowDialog()
            End Using
        End If
    End Sub

    Private Sub StartToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles StartToolStripMenuItem.Click

        Dim str_lorem As String = "lorem ipsum taratatatatatata lorem ipsum" & _
            vbCrLf & "more lore ipsum here!" & _
            vbCrLf & "and even more lorem ipsum there."

        NotifyIcon1.ShowBalloonTip(1000, "Welcome    ", str_lorem, ToolTipIcon.Info)
    End Sub

    Private Sub EndToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles EndToolStripMenuItem.Click
        Close()
    End Sub

    Private Sub AleToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles AleToolStripMenuItem.Click
        MsgBox("Opa")
    End Sub
End Class

Here comes the code in GitHub! Enjoy it!