notifyicon image looks terrible once image ends up in system tray

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2010, C#, on Windows 7.

I have added a notify control to my project and set it to an icon I have imported to the project. The icon image is really good looking if I just preview it, but once I run my code and see it in the system tray, then it's really terrible, like the sides are dotted instead of straight lines and so on. I have tried 16x16, 24x24, 32x32 and 48x48 of the same file but I am having terrible results.

Have I missed anything?

myNotifyIcon.Icon = SysDir.Properties.Resources.icon2_32_ico_rgba;

Screenshot required. Try limiting color content to 8bpp (256 colors). — Hans Passant
@Hans Passant : Its not just the color, but the size also that get deformed. — syncis
@David Heffernan: I called an API to check the size for icons, it said 16x — syncis

idmadj idmadj · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-24T02:00:03

The problem with directly using the icon in your resources is that instead of choosing the right icon version in you icon file, the framework simply scales the default icon version to whatever size the notification area needs. That's why you are seeing jagged edges.

To get the best quality, you'll need to choose the right size in your icon by yourself.

First, instead of directly setting your NotifyIcon.Icon to an icon in your resources, create a new Icon instance. Doing so will allow you to choose a specific icon size in your icon resource. Using SystemInformation.SmallIconSize will get you the size the notification area needs.

So :

myNotifyIcon.Icon = new Icon(Properties.Resources.MyIcon, SystemInformation.SmallIconSize);

Now, SystemInformation.SmallIconSize always returns the right icon size, but only if your application is DPI-aware (otherwise, it always returns 16). If your application isn't DPI-aware, and it is used on a system where DPI-scaling is enabled, the line above will select the 16x16 icon in your resource, at it'll be scaled up to whatever size the notification area needs (in other words, ugly icon).

By making your app DPI-aware, SystemInformation.SmallIconSize will return the right size, taking into account DPI-scaling. For instance, if DPI-scaling is at 150%, SystemInformation.SmallIconSize will return 24 (16 × 1.5).

To make your app DPI-aware, simply add this to your app.manifest, inside the <asmv1:assembly> tag:

  <asmv3:application xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3" >
    <asmv3:windowsSettings xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">
      <dpiAware>true</dpiAware>
    </asmv3:windowsSettings>
  </asmv3:application>

notifyicon image looks terrible once image ends up in system tray

2 Answers