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I have a problem that appears to be new to Windows 10.

I want to create a form that is visible to the user, but with no task bar icon and that does not appear in Alt+Tab.

This is perfectly doable if one is happy to sacrifice the normal styling of a window by following the accepted solutions here for either WPF or Windows Forms.

The general advice for both WPF and Windows Forms is:

  • Set ShowInTaskbar to false
  • Enable the ToolWindow styling (either through setting the border style in WinForms or the WindowStyle in WPF)

However, this has a new, practical problem in Windows 10 when using Virtual Desktops: the moment you do the above, the WPF or WinForms window will appear in every virtual desktop. See my example application with a red background:

window appears in every virtual desktop

This affects both the Task View switching screen and the actual desktop itself. No matter where you go, the form is there!

Is there any way to show a form - or even just a bitmap - on Windows without anything appearing in the taskbar, without anything appearing in Alt+Tab and without duplicating the window on every virtual desktop?

I have spent two days researching every possible option, trying every example online, reading MSDN documentation on window styles etc. but all resort to the same method, either through P/Invoke calls or directly, but either way the result is the same.

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