How to remove white touch dot on Windows 10 - windows-10

Question

I am creating a kiosk–like application for a Windows 10 PC with a touch screen as its only input interface. What I want to remove is the white touch dot that is displayed as a visual touch feedback (mostly together with a circle, which can be turned off).
Does anyone know how to do this?
I have already searched the registry if there was a cursor (*.cur) file which is used but did not find any results. Due to that I guess that the touch feedback is displayed differently.
Just to make sure — I do not want to lose touch functionality, only the visual feedback needs to be gone.

Answer 1

For WPF programs:
In order to remove the touch feedback from WPF elements, it's enough to set Stylus.IsTapFeedbackEnabled dependency property to false. You may want to do that within styles:
<Style x:Key="yourStyle">
<Setter Property="Stylus.IsTapFeedbackEnabled" Value="False" />
</Style>
The white touch dot you cited is actually a cursor. Whenever you touch the screen, Windows replaces the cursor set for the control with the touch cursor. To avoid this honestly ugly behavior, you can set your cursor to Cursors.None, so that the cursor will be hidden. Paste the code below inside your Window and you won't see your white touch dot anymore.
protected override void OnPreviewTouchDown(TouchEventArgs e)
{
base.OnPreviewTouchDown(e);
Cursor = Cursors.None;
}
protected override void OnPreviewTouchMove(TouchEventArgs e)
{
base.OnPreviewTouchMove(e);
Cursor = Cursors.None;
}
protected override void OnGotMouseCapture(MouseEventArgs e)
{
base.OnGotMouseCapture(e);
Cursor = Cursors.Arrow;
}
protected override void OnPreviewMouseMove(MouseEventArgs e)
{
base.OnPreviewMouseMove(e);
if (e.StylusDevice == null)
Cursor = Cursors.Arrow;
}
Your cursor will always be set to Cursors.Arrow when you're using the mouse, though, so you could lose a different cursor you had set to the window. It'd be an easy task to tweak this behavior — my code only serves for demonstration purposes.
For Windows Forms programs:
Looking at the Reference Source for Stylus.IsTapFeedbackEnabled, I've figured out the P/Invoke calls that happen under the hood. Here's what I've come up with for Windows Form applications:
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace TouchableWinform
{
public class TouchableForm : Form
{
private const string TOUCH_SUPPORT_CATEGORY = "Touch support";
private const bool IS_PRESS_AND_HOLD_ENABLED_DEFAULT_VALUE = false;
private const bool IS_FLICKS_ENABLED_DEFAULT_VALUE = false;
private const bool IS_TAP_FEEDBACK_DEFAULT_VALUE = false;
private const bool IS_TOUCH_FEEDBACK_DEFAULT_VALUE = false;
/// <summary>
/// Gets or sets a values indicating whether press and hold is enabled.
/// </summary>
[Category(TOUCH_SUPPORT_CATEGORY), Description("Gets or sets a values indicating whether press and hold is enabled."), EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Always), DefaultValue(IS_PRESS_AND_HOLD_ENABLED_DEFAULT_VALUE)]
public bool IsPressAndHoldEnabled
{
get;
set;
} = IS_PRESS_AND_HOLD_ENABLED_DEFAULT_VALUE;
/// <summary>
/// Gets or sets a value indicating whether flicks are enabled.
/// </summary>
[Category(TOUCH_SUPPORT_CATEGORY), Description("Gets or sets a value indicating whether flicks are enabled."), EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Always), DefaultValue(IS_FLICKS_ENABLED_DEFAULT_VALUE)]
public bool IsFlicksEnabled
{
get;
set;
} = IS_FLICKS_ENABLED_DEFAULT_VALUE;
/// <summary>
/// Gets or sets whether a value indicating whether tap feedback is enabled.
/// </summary>
[Category(TOUCH_SUPPORT_CATEGORY), Description("Gets or sets whether a value indicating whether tap feedback is enabled."), EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Always), DefaultValue(IS_TAP_FEEDBACK_DEFAULT_VALUE)]
public bool IsTapFeedbackEnabled
{
get;
set;
} = IS_TAP_FEEDBACK_DEFAULT_VALUE;
/// <summary>
/// Gets or sets whether a value indicating whether touch feedback is enabled.
/// </summary>
[Category(TOUCH_SUPPORT_CATEGORY), Description("Gets or sets whether a value indicating whether touch feedback is enabled."), EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Always), DefaultValue(IS_TOUCH_FEEDBACK_DEFAULT_VALUE)]
public bool IsTouchFeedbackEnabled
{
get;
set;
} = IS_TOUCH_FEEDBACK_DEFAULT_VALUE;
/// <summary>
/// Processes Windows messages.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="m">The Windows <see cref="Message"/> to process.</param>
protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
{
switch (m.Msg)
{
case 0x2CB:
m.Result = new IntPtr(1);
break;
case 0x2CC:
uint flags = 0;
if (!IsPressAndHoldEnabled)
flags |= 1;
if (!IsTapFeedbackEnabled)
flags |= 8;
flags |= IsTouchFeedbackEnabled ? (uint)0x100 : 0x200;
if (!IsFlicksEnabled)
flags |= 0x10000;
m.Result = new IntPtr(flags);
break;
default:
base.WndProc(ref m);
break;
}
}
}
}
Unfortunately, for some reason I couldn't still figure out, it doesn't quite look to be working. I'm open to any suggestions.

Answer 2

In Windows 10, you can use pointer messages to handle touches. This would make WPF act like native UWP app behavior. The white dot will disappear and touch move animation get fixed.
If you are using .NET Core, add this line to your App.xaml.cs constructor:
public partial class App : Application
{
public App()
{
AppContext.SetSwitch("Switch.System.Windows.Input.Stylus.EnablePointerSupport", true);
}
}
For .NET Framework, you should add App.config file to project. The contents are shown below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<startup>
<supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.7" />
</startup>
<runtime>
<AppContextSwitchOverrides value="Switch.System.Windows.Input.Stylus.EnablePointerSupport=true" />
</runtime>
</configuration>
Sources:
How to enable pointer message support in WPF .NET Core
WPF will have a touch offset after trun on the WM_Pointer message