Loading TrayIcon menu faster?

[Mtax-Development]

I am developing an application, which is operated through the TrayIcon menu only. On Windows, the first opening of said menu, after right-clicking it, is always very slow. It often takes at least two seconds before the menu is shown, even though all logic of constructing the menu is done when the application first starts, not when the menu is opened. There even are cases where I can even hear my laptop speed-up fans only to load said menu, which then will appear after a delay. However, subsequent menu openings are quick as expected.

Is there a way to preload resources needed to render the menu without user interaction? I attempted to create a window with text off-screen to force text-related resources to load, but I am still running into this issue. Perhaps there is a way to preload DLLs involved in rendering the TrayIcon menu and keep them in memory?

[stevemonaco]

You should try to narrow down the cause, if possible. If you can't (and suspect long JIT times), then try ReadyToRun deployment. NativeAOT would work, too, but can be hard to port already existing apps to it.

[Mtax-Development]

The application is fairly simple, about 20 entries in the TrayIcon menu. The TrayIcon is initialized entirely during the runtime, at application boot. I am not testing on a slow device, but the delay tends to increase when the system is busy, as if my process had low priority overall. Publish is set to produce a single file, but I noticed the DLL the application is loading when this delay happens, libHarfBuzzSharp.dll, always remains a separate file. But the delay occurs even if not using the single file setting.

[timunie]

Try with a minimum sample and file it here if issue persists

[Mtax-Development]

@timunie The project is open-source and can be checked here: https://github.com/Mtax-Development/GameMakerCompanion
Since the application is rather simple, this project in itself is of minimal state of my setup, because the Tray class initializes everything else. I would not have much to disable, other than an additional thread started by it, but from my testing, it does not affect the issue.

[timunie]

No, this is not a minimal sample, this is a complete App. I would have to scan the entire source before to try and I at least have no capacity to do this.

[Mtax-Development]

@timunie, apologies for the hiatus. I prepared a minimal sample presenting the issue, where I trimmed the project to minimum and included a .gif file visually presenting the issue. The delay shown in it is proven by that the cursor can be moved after performing a right-click on the Tray Icon to cause the Menu to appear in a different spot, other than right above of the icon. This is exemplified best upon the first right-click of the runtime, so keep restarting the application to test it multiple times.

Tray Menu Opening Delay Minimal Sample.zip