How to catch event Mouse Hold on a control?

Question

I want to catch the event that user clicks and holds mouse on a control in C#.

I have read on MSDN and I only see events Mouse Down, Mouse Up, ... but don't have Move Hold event.

Answer 1

You need to use mentinoed events with some timer between them.

Example:

• MouseDown
  • Start Timer
• MouseUp
  • Disable Timer

In case if user holds more then timer time - invoke your event handler, when mouseUp happend faster then timer elapsed - disable runned timer.

Answer 2

public bool down;
private void ControlName_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    down = true;
}
private void ControlName_EventName(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (down) {// code if the mouse is held
    }
}
private void ControlName_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    down = false;
}

Answer 3

The accepted answer and comments are already good but the following simple implementation may be useful for posterity:

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace WinFormsTest
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        private readonly Timer timer;

        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            timer = new Timer();
            timer.Interval = 3000;
            timer.Tick += Timer_Tick;
        }

        private void Timer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            timer.Enabled = false;
            MessageBox.Show("MouseHold");
        }

        private void Button_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            timer.Start();
        }

        private void Button_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            timer.Enabled = false;
        }
    }
}

Please note that:

1. This code works for right click also (You may want to work with left click only).
2. If you complete the MouseUp event outside the Button then this will be ignored and the handler method will work anyway.

Answer 4

First, you should use stop watch to detect time you want.

using System.Diagnostics;

Second, define a global instance of stopwatch class.

Stopwatch s = new Stopwatch();

This is the first event you should use:

private void controlName_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    s.Start();
}

This is the second event you should use:

private void controlName_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    s.Stop();
    //determine time you want . but take attention it's in millisecond
    if (s.ElapsedMilliseconds <= 700 && s.ElapsedMilliseconds >= 200)
    {
        //you code here.
    }           
    s.Reset();           
}