TaskDialogForceCompatibilityMode Property

public bool ForceCompatibilityMode { get; set; }

Public Property ForceCompatibilityMode As Boolean
	Get
	Set

public:
property bool ForceCompatibilityMode {
	bool get ();
	void set (bool value);
}

member ForceCompatibilityMode : bool with get, set

Property Value

Compatibility mode is automatically used in the following cases:

• The operating system is not Windows Vista or later.
• Application.EnableVisualStyles was not called on launching the application.
• TranslateStandardButtons is set in Options.
• Icon is SecurityQuestion (so the special header colors can be applied).
• There is at least one button in Buttons that has a custom icon (CustomIcon is set).

When this property is set to , the following improvements can be observed:

• If the custom buttons have Description, and buttons are displayed as standard buttons rather than command links, then the descriptions are displayed as tool tips when the buttons are hovered by the mouse.
• The Description of radio buttons are displayed as tool tips.
• Ctrl+C copies more information than the standard version (e.g. includes the texts of the radio buttons, indicates elevated icons, etc.)
• In high contrast mode it is ensured that the content remains visible if Control and Window colors are the inverse of each other.
• Better support of Right-to-Left mode.

The following image illustrates native rendering on Windows 11:

The same dialog on Windows XP, using compatible rendering (no matter what the value of this property is):

The compatible rendering is automatically applied also when visual styles are not enabled by the Application.EnableVisualStyles method. Note that attempting to use the System.Windows.Forms.TaskDialog (available when targeting .NET 5.0+) would throw an exception in such case. The following image is still the same TaskDialog as above when visual styles are disabled on Windows 11:

You might want to set this property to even when the native dialog would always work, because the native rendering has some issues in certain cases. For example, in high contrast mode it accidentally mixes Window and Control colors for some visual elements, which does not become apparent until you use a theme where Window and Control background/foreground colors are the inverse of each other:

Whereas in forced compatible mode every control picks their background/foreground colors correctly:

Reference