c# flickering Listview on update

The ListView control has a flicker issue. The problem appears to be that the control's Update overload is improperly implemented such that it acts like a Refresh. An Update should cause the control to redraw only its invalid regions whereas a Refresh redraws the control’s entire client area. So if you were to change, say, the background color of one item in the list then only that particular item should need to be repainted. Unfortunately, the ListView control seems to be of a different opinion and wants to repaint its entire surface whenever you mess with a single item… even if the item is not currently being displayed. So, anyways, you can easily suppress the flicker by rolling your own as follows:

class ListViewNF : System.Windows.Forms.ListView
{
    public ListViewNF()
    {
        //Activate double buffering
        this.SetStyle(ControlStyles.OptimizedDoubleBuffer | ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint, true);

        //Enable the OnNotifyMessage event so we get a chance to filter out 
        // Windows messages before they get to the form's WndProc
        this.SetStyle(ControlStyles.EnableNotifyMessage, true);
    }

    protected override void OnNotifyMessage(Message m)
    {
        //Filter out the WM_ERASEBKGND message
        if(m.Msg != 0x14)
        {
            base.OnNotifyMessage(m);
        }
    }
}

From: Geekswithblogs.net

In addition to the other replies, many controls have a [Begin|End]Update() method that you can use to reduce flickering when editing the contents - for example:

    listView.BeginUpdate();
    try {
        // listView.Items... (lots of editing)
    } finally {
        listView.EndUpdate();
    }

Yes, make it double buffered. It will reduce the flicker ;) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.listview.doublebuffered.aspx

You can use the following extension class to set the DoubleBuffered property to true:

using System.Reflection;

public static class ListViewExtensions
{
    public static void SetDoubleBuffered(this ListView listView, bool value)
    {
        listView.GetType()
            .GetProperty("DoubleBuffered", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic)
            .SetValue(listView, value);
    }
}

This worked best for me.
Since you are editing the cell directly, the best solution in your case would be to simply refresh/reload that particular cell/row instead of the entire table.
You could use the RedrawItems(...) method that basically repaints only the specified range of items/rows of the listview.

public void RedrawItems(int startIndex, int endIndex, bool invalidateOnly);

Reference

This totally got rid of the full listview flicker for me.
Only the relevant item/record flickers while getting updated.

Cheers!

Try setting the double buffered property in true.

Also you could use:

this.SuspendLayout();

//update control

this.ResumeLayout(False);

this.PerformLayout();

For what it's worth, in my case, I simply had to add a call to

Application.EnableVisualStyles()

before running the application, like this:

    private static void Main()
    {
        Application.EnableVisualStyles();
        Application.Run(new Form1());
    }

Otherwise, double buffering is not enough. Maybe it was a very old project and new ones have that setting by default...

If someone would still look an answer for this, I used a timer for a slight delay and it solved the problem nicely. I wanted to highlight (change colour) for the entire row on mouse move event, but I think it would work for item replacement etc. For me listView.BeginUpdate() and listView.EndUpdate() didn't work, DoubleBuffered property also didn't work, I have googled a lot and nothing worked.

private int currentViewItemIndex;
private int lastViewItemIndex;

    private void listView_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
    {            
        ListViewItem lvi = listView.GetItemAt(e.X, e.Y);

        if (lvi != null && lastViewItemIndex == -1)
        {
            listView.Items[lvi.Index].BackColor = Color.Green;
            lastViewItemIndex = lvi.Index;
        }

        if (lvi != null && lastViewItemIndex != -1)
        {
            currentViewItemIndex = lvi.Index;
            listViewTimer.Start(); 
        } 
    }

    private void listViewTimer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        listView.BeginUpdate();
        listView.Items[lastViewItemIndex].BackColor = Colour.Transparent;
        listView.Items[currentViewItemIndex].BackColor = Colour.Green;
        listView.EndUpdate();
        lastViewItemIndex = currentViewItemIndex;
        listViewTimer.Stop();
    }