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();
    }