I'm working on a project in Qt (PySide, but any Qt solution is welcome). I need to have an image fade in and do random animation. That is done, but it creates it's own taskbar item (yuck)! Code:
self.img_Check = QPixmap("resources/checkmark.png")
self.lab = QSplashScreen(self.img_Check)
self.lab.setWindowFlags(Qt.WindowStaysOnTopHint)
self.lab.setMask(self.img_Check.mask())
If I remove the setWindowFlags(Qt.WindowStaysOnTopHint) then it works perfectly, but it's not "Always on Top" and the user won't see the animation if he's using another application.
There's got to be a way to make an always-on-top animation without creating a menu bar item, but I'm not sure how. I do have a QMainWindow, in case you are curious.
I tried tons of flag combinations, and I can't do all 3: - Display on top of other Windows, like MS-Word. - Without taking over the active window status. - No taskbar item appear for this animation's window.
Context: Just in case you are curious why I need to do this, the program backs up a user's files in the background, and when one is finished processing, it fades in a "checkmark" icon at 50% opacity for a few seconds, so the user knows the backup is completed. I cannot use another way of indicating the backup is completed. That is the specification.
When you call setWindowFlags, you remove all window flags except the flags you've specified in the argument. So Qt.SplashScreen flag is removed and the window is no longer a splash screen.
You should specify Qt.WindowStaysOnTopHint as the second argument of QSplashScreen constructor. See the docs:
QSplashScreen::QSplashScreen(const QPixmap & pixmap = QPixmap(), Qt::WindowFlags f = 0)
There should be no need to set the widget flags, f, except perhaps Qt::WindowStaysOnTopHint.
If you would need to add Qt.WindowStaysOnTopHint dynamically later, you can do something like
self.lab.setWindowFlags(self.lab.windowFlags() | Qt.WindowStaysOnTopHint)
or
self.lab.setWindowFlags(Qt.SplashScreen | Qt.WindowStaysOnTopHint)