Hiding other windows in C#

To start with include namespaces

Code:

using System.Diagnostics;               // For prcesss related information
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;   // For DLL importing

Now declare these variables

Code:

private const int SW_HIDE = 0; 

Now declare win32 function ShowWindow

Code:

[DllImport("User32")] 
private static extern int ShowWindow(int hwnd, int nCmdShow);

The above function accepts 2 parameters hWnd is handle of a window whose state we needs to be modified and nCmdShow contains integer value which denotes state. Here are the list of available states

Code:

SW_HIDE             0
SW_SHOWNORMAL       1
SW_NORMAL           1
SW_SHOWMINIMIZED    2
SW_SHOWMAXIMIZED    3
SW_MAXIMIZE         3
SW_SHOWNOACTIVATE   4
SW_SHOW             5
SW_MINIMIZE         6
SW_SHOWMINNOACTIVE  7
SW_SHOWNA           8
SW_RESTORE          9
SW_SHOWDEFAULT      10
SW_FORCEMINIMIZE    11
SW_MAX              11

Now the main problem is how to get handle of a particular window. Its simple

Process[] processRunning = Process.GetProcesses();

This will return array of all the processes. After this you can use foreach loop to iterate through each process in the array.

Code:

int hWnd;
Process[] processRunning = Process.GetProcesses();
foreach (Process pr in processRunning)
{
    if (pr.ProcessName == "notepad")
    {
        hWnd = pr.MainWindowHandle.ToInt32();
        ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_HIDE);
    }
}

Note Remember that it will just Hide the notepad process and not kill it. You need to be killing all the notepad.exe's running in the background through task manager. If you even wish to kill the process use

Code:

pr.Kill();

inside the if block.

 

Its just one API Call and so I did not had it.