How to Create and Manage a Splash Screen in a Windows Forms Application?

Create and manage splash screens in Windows Forms applications

Showing a splash screen when an application starts is a common way to improve user experience. This article will guide you through the steps of implementing a splash screen in a Windows Forms application.

Design splash screen form

The first step is to create a new borderless form to serve as your splash screen. Make the form unmovable by setting the ControlBox property to False. Adjust the StartPosition property to CenterScreen to display the startup screen in the center of the user's monitor. Set FormBorderStyle to None to remove the border. Additionally, set the MinimumSize and MaximumSize properties to the same as the initial Size to prevent the user from resizing the form.

Display splash screen

Now you need to decide where in your code to show and close the splash screen. This usually involves initializing your main application form or performing any lengthy startup operations.

To display a splash screen, create an instance of the splash screen form and call the Show() method. Keep a reference to this instance while your startup logic executes.

Hide splash screen

After the main application form has loaded, you can close the splash screen by calling the Close() method on the previously created instance.

Advanced Consideration

If your splash screen will display animated images, the window will also need to be "double buffered" and you will need to ensure that all initialization logic happens outside the GUI thread (this means you cannot to have the main loading logic in; you must create a BackgroundWorker or other thread routine).

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