How do I update the GUI from another thread?

The simplest way is an anonymous method passed into Label.Invoke:

// Running on the worker thread
string newText = "abc";
form.Label.Invoke((MethodInvoker)delegate {
    // Running on the UI thread
    form.Label.Text = newText;
});
// Back on the worker thread

Notice that Invoke blocks execution until it completes--this is synchronous code. The question doesn't ask about asynchronous code, but there is lots of content on Stack Overflow about writing asynchronous code when you want to learn about it.

For .NET 2.0, here's a nice bit of code I wrote that does exactly what you want, and works for any property on a Control:

private delegate void SetControlPropertyThreadSafeDelegate(
    Control control, 
    string propertyName, 
    object propertyValue);

public static void SetControlPropertyThreadSafe(
    Control control, 
    string propertyName, 
    object propertyValue)
{
  if (control.InvokeRequired)
  {
    control.Invoke(new SetControlPropertyThreadSafeDelegate               
    (SetControlPropertyThreadSafe), 
    new object[] { control, propertyName, propertyValue });
  }
  else
  {
    control.GetType().InvokeMember(
        propertyName, 
        BindingFlags.SetProperty, 
        null, 
        control, 
        new object[] { propertyValue });
  }
}

Call it like this:

// thread-safe equivalent of
// myLabel.Text = status;
SetControlPropertyThreadSafe(myLabel, "Text", status);

If you're using .NET 3.0 or above, you could rewrite the above method as an extension method of the Control class, which would then simplify the call to:

myLabel.SetPropertyThreadSafe("Text", status);

UPDATE 05/10/2010:

For .NET 3.0 you should use this code:

private delegate void SetPropertyThreadSafeDelegate<TResult>(
    Control @this, 
    Expression<Func<TResult>> property, 
    TResult value);

public static void SetPropertyThreadSafe<TResult>(
    this Control @this, 
    Expression<Func<TResult>> property, 
    TResult value)
{
  var propertyInfo = (property.Body as MemberExpression).Member 
      as PropertyInfo;

  if (propertyInfo == null ||
      !@this.GetType().IsSubclassOf(propertyInfo.ReflectedType) ||
      @this.GetType().GetProperty(
          propertyInfo.Name, 
          propertyInfo.PropertyType) == null)
  {
    throw new ArgumentException("The lambda expression 'property' must reference a valid property on this Control.");
  }

  if (@this.InvokeRequired)
  {
      @this.Invoke(new SetPropertyThreadSafeDelegate<TResult> 
      (SetPropertyThreadSafe), 
      new object[] { @this, property, value });
  }
  else
  {
      @this.GetType().InvokeMember(
          propertyInfo.Name, 
          BindingFlags.SetProperty, 
          null, 
          @this, 
          new object[] { value });
  }
}

which uses LINQ and lambda expressions to allow much cleaner, simpler and safer syntax:

// status has to be of type string or this will fail to compile
myLabel.SetPropertyThreadSafe(() => myLabel.Text, status);

Not only is the property name now checked at compile time, the property's type is as well, so it's impossible to (for example) assign a string value to a boolean property, and hence cause a runtime exception.

Unfortunately this doesn't stop anyone from doing stupid things such as passing in another Control's property and value, so the following will happily compile:

myLabel.SetPropertyThreadSafe(() => aForm.ShowIcon, false);

Hence I added the runtime checks to ensure that the passed-in property does actually belong to the Control that the method's being called on. Not perfect, but still a lot better than the .NET 2.0 version.

If anyone has any further suggestions on how to improve this code for compile-time safety, please comment!

This is the classic way you should do this:

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Threading;

namespace Test
{
    public partial class UIThread : Form
    {
        Worker worker;

        Thread workerThread;

        public UIThread()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            worker = new Worker();
            worker.ProgressChanged += new EventHandler<ProgressChangedArgs>(OnWorkerProgressChanged);
            workerThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(worker.StartWork));
            workerThread.Start();
        }

        private void OnWorkerProgressChanged(object sender, ProgressChangedArgs e)
        {
            // Cross thread - so you don't get the cross-threading exception
            if (this.InvokeRequired)
            {
                this.BeginInvoke((MethodInvoker)delegate
                {
                    OnWorkerProgressChanged(sender, e);
                });
                return;
            }

            // Change control
            this.label1.Text = e.Progress;
        }
    }

    public class Worker
    {
        public event EventHandler<ProgressChangedArgs> ProgressChanged;

        protected void OnProgressChanged(ProgressChangedArgs e)
        {
            if(ProgressChanged!=null)
            {
                ProgressChanged(this,e);
            }
        }

        public void StartWork()
        {
            Thread.Sleep(100);
            OnProgressChanged(new ProgressChangedArgs("Progress Changed"));
            Thread.Sleep(100);
        }
    }


    public class ProgressChangedArgs : EventArgs
    {
        public string Progress {get;private set;}
        public ProgressChangedArgs(string progress)
        {
            Progress = progress;
        }
    }
}

Your worker thread has an event. Your UI thread starts off another thread to do the work and hooks up that worker event so you can display the state of the worker thread.

Then in the UI you need to cross threads to change the actual control... like a label or a progress bar.

The simple solution is to use Control.Invoke.

void DoSomething()
{
    if (InvokeRequired) {
        Invoke(new MethodInvoker(updateGUI));
    } else {
        // Do Something
        updateGUI();
    }
}

void updateGUI() {
    // update gui here
}

You'll have to make sure that the update happens on the correct thread; the UI thread.

In order to do this, you'll have to Invoke the event-handler instead of calling it directly.

You can do this by raising your event like this:

(The code is typed here out of my head, so I haven't checked for correct syntax, etc., but it should get you going.)

if( MyEvent != null )
{
   Delegate[] eventHandlers = MyEvent.GetInvocationList();

   foreach( Delegate d in eventHandlers )
   {
      // Check whether the target of the delegate implements 
      // ISynchronizeInvoke (Winforms controls do), and see
      // if a context-switch is required.
      ISynchronizeInvoke target = d.Target as ISynchronizeInvoke;

      if( target != null && target.InvokeRequired )
      {
         target.Invoke (d, ... );
      }
      else
      {
          d.DynamicInvoke ( ... );
      }
   }
}

Note that the code above will not work on WPF projects, since WPF controls do not implement the ISynchronizeInvoke interface.

In order to make sure that the code above works with Windows Forms and WPF, and all other platforms, you can have a look at the AsyncOperation, AsyncOperationManager and SynchronizationContext classes.

In order to easily raise events this way, I've created an extension method, which allows me to simplify raising an event by just calling:

MyEvent.Raise(this, EventArgs.Empty);

Of course, you can also make use of the BackGroundWorker class, which will abstract this matter for you.

You'll need to Invoke the method on the GUI thread. You can do that by calling Control.Invoke.

For example:

delegate void UpdateLabelDelegate (string message);

void UpdateLabel (string message)
{
    if (InvokeRequired)
    {
         Invoke (new UpdateLabelDelegate (UpdateLabel), message);
         return;
    }

    MyLabelControl.Text = message;
}

And yet another generic Control extension aproach..

First add an extension method for objects of type Control

public static void InvokeIfRequired<T>(this T c, Action<T> action) where T : Control
{
    if (c.InvokeRequired)
    {
        c.Invoke(new Action(() => action(c)));
    }
    else
    {
        action(c);
    }
}

and call like this from another thread to access a Control named object1 in UI-thread:

object1.InvokeIfRequired(c => { c.Visible = true; });
object1.InvokeIfRequired(c => { c.Text = "ABC"; });

..or like this

object1.InvokeIfRequired(c => 
  { 
      c.Text = "ABC";
      c.Visible = true; 
  }
);

just use synchronization context of ui

using System.Threading;

// ...

public partial class MyForm : Form
{
    private readonly SynchronizationContext uiContext;

    public MyForm()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        uiContext = SynchronizationContext.Current; // get ui thread context
    }

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Thread t = new Thread(() =>
            {// set ui thread context to new thread context                            
             // for operations with ui elements to be performed in proper thread
             SynchronizationContext
                 .SetSynchronizationContext(uiContext);
             label1.Text = "some text";
            });
        t.Start();
    }
}

General approach is like:

using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace WindowsFormsApp1
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        int clickCount = 0;

        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            label1.SetText("0");
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            new Thread(() => label1.SetText((++clickCount).ToString())).Start();
        }
    }

    public static class ControlExtensions
    {
        public static void SetText(this Control control, string text)
        {
            if (control.InvokeRequired)
                control.Invoke(setText, control, text);
            else
                control.Text = text;
        }

        private static readonly Action<Control, string> setText =
            (control, text) => control.Text = text;
    }
}

Explanation:

The answer is pretty like this one. But uses neater (as for me) and newer syntax. The point is InvokeRequired property of control. It gets a value indicating whether the caller must call an invoke method when making method calls to the control because the caller is on a different thread than the one the control was created on. So if we call control.SetText("some text") on the same thread control was created on, it's OK just to set Text as this control.Text = text. But on any other thread it causes System.InvalidOperationException so one must call a method via control.Invoke(...) to set Text on the thread control was created on.