Getting a List of the Available COM Ports in C#

Posted 2012-07-26 in Software

It’s really nice to show the user a list of the COM ports they actually have on their machines. All too often I have seen software that makes you type in the COM port name. Even worse are the applications that force you to select from a list of COM ports, usually COM1 to COM5, without the option of typing in a different one!

Below is some really simple code that generates a list of the available COM ports and inserts the list into a drop-down selection control in a WinForms application.

string[] ports = SerialPort.GetPortNames();
if (ports.Length > 0) {
    Array.Sort(ports);
    COMPort.Items.AddRange(ports);
    COMPort.Text = ports[0];
} else {
    COMPort.Text = "Unable to Detect COM ports";
}