Get all windows that have taskbar icon

Question

I am trying to get all the window handles of applications that have a taskbar icon only.

The solutions I have converted to C# that have failed:

Enumerate windows like alt-tab does

Enumerate windows like alt-tab does

Enumerate windows like alt-tab does

And a couple that I lost track of already. All these solutions either crash or bring up windowless processes like svchost, plugin processes, etc.

Basically I just need the windows that are actively available in the task bar with icons. I am using the window handle of

Process.MainWindowHandle

What are some working solutions to this? Is there a thread with a working solution that I missed?

Answer 1

Try retrieving all processes where the MainWindowTitle property is set.

It doesn't feel like a particularly elegant solution, but it worked for me, bringing back only those applications which were running and visibly open in the taskbar.

List<Process> taskBarProcesses = Process.GetProcesses().
                                         Where(p => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(p.MainWindowTitle))
                                         .ToList();