starred/terminal
1
0
Fork 0
mirror of https://github.com/microsoft/terminal.git synced 2026-02-04 05:35:20 +00:00
Code Issues 19.0k Packages Projects Releases 20 Wiki Activity

ShowWindow(GetConsoleWindow(), SW_HIDE); does not work with Terminal in Windows 11 #19838

New Issue
Closed
opened 2026-01-31 06:54:58 +00:00 by claunia · 4 comments
claunia commented 2026-01-31 06:54:58 +00:00
Owner
Copy Link

Originally created by @pmaillot on GitHub (May 8, 2023).

I develop small applications using C and Win32 libraries. I typically call
ShowWindow(GetConsoleWindow(), SW_HIDE); in my programs so the console/terminal window would become hidden, leaving only the GUI application and its main loop for capturing user events. Only when/if needed, would I show again the console window under certain circumstances, such as fatal errors.
This works/worked great with all instances of Windows (at least XP and W10) but in W11, as now "Terminal" takes over the console host by default, my call to ShowWindow will no longer hide the terminal.

I can ask all users to change the default "Terminal" back to Console Host, but is there another/better way?

Thx,
-Patrick

Originally created by @pmaillot on GitHub (May 8, 2023). I develop small applications using C and Win32 libraries. I typically call `ShowWindow(GetConsoleWindow(), SW_HIDE); `in my programs so the console/terminal window would become hidden, leaving only the GUI application and its main loop for capturing user events. Only when/if needed, would I show again the console window under certain circumstances, such as fatal errors. This works/worked great with all instances of Windows (at least XP and W10) but in W11, as now "Terminal" takes over the console host by default, my call to `ShowWindow` will no longer hide the terminal. I can ask all users to change the default "Terminal" back to Console Host, but is there another/better way? Thx, -Patrick
claunia added the Resolution-Duplicate label 2026-01-31 06:54:58 +00:00
claunia commented 2026-01-31 06:54:58 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@lhecker commented on GitHub (May 8, 2023):

The console basically contains your debug/info log right? That's a really clever way to use it.

To give a short background for this change: We're trying to align Windows more closely to how the other major operating systems work when it comes to terminals. If you write to stdout on those platforms the output is simply discarded. The only way to see it is if you attached something to stdout prior to launching the application, like a terminal or an indirection to a file for instance. /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE on Windows acts a little bit like setting Terminal=true in a .desktop file under Gnome on Linux: It tells the OS to spawn a terminal for you when the application starts. But stil, there's no way to manipulate that terminal, because crucially it's not owned by the console application. It's simply attached to it. If that wasn't the case, doing a SW_HIDE on Windows Terminal would hide all tabs, even those unrelated to your application.

To circumvent this, I'd say the quick fix is to spawn your application through conhost explicitly. Basically, instead of running app.exe you'd run conhost app.exe. This will create a console window, like it used to do, even if the default terminal isn't conhost. The proper fix in my opinion would be to not abuse the terminal as a cheap ring buffer for text, if I'm entirely honest. 😅 Terminals are kind of pretty heavy applications, relatively speaking, and it would be much cheaper to use your own ring buffer for log output. Once an error occurs and if you want to show the log output you can just spawn a conhost instance or similar and print the entire buffer contents all at once. However given that you said that they're very small applications, I'd understand if that's too complex, given the overall complexity of the application...

@lhecker commented on GitHub (May 8, 2023): The console basically contains your debug/info log right? That's a really clever way to use it. To give a short background for this change: We're trying to align Windows more closely to how the other major operating systems work when it comes to terminals. If you write to stdout on those platforms the output is simply discarded. The only way to see it is if you attached something to stdout prior to launching the application, like a terminal or an indirection to a file for instance. `/SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE` on Windows acts a little bit like setting `Terminal=true` in a `.desktop` file under Gnome on Linux: It tells the OS to spawn a terminal for you when the application starts. But stil, there's no way to manipulate that terminal, because crucially it's not owned by the console application. It's simply attached to it. If that wasn't the case, doing a `SW_HIDE` on Windows Terminal would hide all tabs, even those unrelated to your application. To circumvent this, I'd say the quick fix is to spawn your application through conhost explicitly. Basically, instead of running `app.exe` you'd run `conhost app.exe`. This will create a console window, like it used to do, even if the default terminal isn't conhost. The proper fix in my opinion would be to not abuse the terminal as a cheap ring buffer for text, if I'm entirely honest. 😅 Terminals are kind of pretty heavy applications, relatively speaking, and it would be much cheaper to use your own ring buffer for log output. Once an error occurs and if you want to show the log output you can just spawn a conhost instance or similar and print the entire buffer contents all at once. However given that you said that they're very small applications, I'd understand if that's too complex, given the overall complexity of the application...
claunia commented 2026-01-31 06:54:59 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@pmaillot commented on GitHub (May 8, 2023):

Thx for your comments/suggestions @lhecker ; Afraid some of them will not be satisfactory for end-users. I will have trouble explaining GUI only users they should launch the GUI app using a command-line script, when all they want to know is where to click.
So far my best option has been to set the default behavior or Terminal to Console Host, which doesn't seem to prevent having different tabs etc.

I hope MS finds a way to 'trace' so to speak the terminal associated with the instance of the app it is attached to, and create a separate, single tab instance of the Terminal app for the launching application, Then a SW_HIDE should gracefully be able to hide that instance of the Terminal app, and not the others that may already exist.

As to "small apps", some of them are above 20000 lines, but some are just a few 100's. :-)

@pmaillot commented on GitHub (May 8, 2023): Thx for your comments/suggestions @lhecker ; Afraid some of them will not be satisfactory for end-users. I will have trouble explaining GUI only users they should launch the GUI app using a command-line script, when all they want to know is where to click. So far my best option has been to set the default behavior or `Terminal` to `Console Host`, which doesn't seem to prevent having different tabs etc. I hope MS finds a way to 'trace' so to speak the terminal associated with the instance of the app it is attached to, and create a separate, single tab instance of the `Terminal` app for the launching application, Then a `SW_HIDE` should gracefully be able to hide that instance of the `Terminal` app, and not the others that may already exist. As to "small apps", some of them are above 20000 lines, but some are just a few 100's. :-)
claunia commented 2026-01-31 06:54:59 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@PankajBhojwani commented on GitHub (May 10, 2023):

Thank you for the feedback! This is a duplicate of #12464, please follow that thread for updates on this issue. (It may not seem like the exact same issue, but the solution is the same for both)

/dup #12464

@PankajBhojwani commented on GitHub (May 10, 2023): Thank you for the feedback! This is a duplicate of #12464, please follow that thread for updates on this issue. (It may not seem like the exact same issue, but the solution is the same for both) /dup #12464
claunia commented 2026-01-31 06:54:59 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@microsoft-github-policy-service[bot] commented on GitHub (May 10, 2023):

Hi! We've identified this issue as a duplicate of another one that already exists on this Issue Tracker. This specific instance is being closed in favor of tracking the concern over on the referenced thread. Thanks for your report!

@microsoft-github-policy-service[bot] commented on GitHub (May 10, 2023): Hi! We've identified this issue as a duplicate of another one that already exists on this Issue Tracker. This specific instance is being closed in favor of tracking the concern over on the referenced thread. Thanks for your report!
Sign in to join this conversation.
No Branch/Tag Specified
Branches Tags
Labels
Clear labels
⛺ Reserved
A11yCO
A11yMAS
A11ySev1
A11ySev2
A11ySev3
A11yTTValidated
A11yUsable
A11yVoiceAccess
A11yWCAG
Area-Accessibility
Area-AtlasEngine
Area-AzureShell
Area-Build
Area-Build
Area-Chat
Area-CmdPal
Area-CodeHealth
Area-Commandline
Area-CookedRead
Area-DefApp
Area-Extensibility
Area-Fonts
Area-GroupPolicy
Area-i18n
Area-Input
Area-Interaction
Area-Interop
Area-Localization
Area-Output
Area-Performance
Area-Portable
Area-Quality
Area-Remoting
Area-Rendering
Area-Schema
Area-Server
Area-Settings
Area-SettingsUI
Area-ShellExtension
Area-ShellExtension
Area-ShellExtension
Area-Suggestions
Area-Suggestions
Area-TerminalConnection
Area-TerminalControl
Area-Theming
Area-UserInterface
Area-VT
Area-Windowing
Area-WPFControl
AutoMerge
Blocking-Ingestion
Culprit-Centennial
Culprit-WinUI
Disability-All
Disability-Blind
Disability-LowVision
Disability-Mobility
External-Blocked-WinUI3
Fixed
Gathering-Data
good first issue
HCL-E+D
HCL-WindowsTerminal
Help Wanted
Impact-Compatibility
Impact-Compliance
Impact-Correctness
Impact-Visual
In-PR
InclusionBacklog
InclusionBacklog-Windows TerminalWin32
InclusionCommitted-202206
Issue-Bug
Issue-Docs
Issue-Feature
Issue-Feature
Issue-Question
Issue-Samples
Issue-Scenario
Issue-Task
Needs-Attention
Needs-Author-Feedback
Needs-Bisect
Needs-Discussion
Needs-Repro
Needs-Tag-Fix
Needs-Tag-Fix
Needs-Triage
No-Recent-Activity
Priority-0
Priority-1
Priority-2
Priority-3
Product-Cmd.exe
Product-Colortool
Product-Colortool
Product-Colortool
Product-Conhost
Product-Conpty
Product-Meta
Product-Powershell
Product-Terminal
Product-WSL
pull-request
Mirrored from GitHub Pull Request
 Resolution-Answered
Resolution-By-Design
Resolution-Duplicate
Resolution-External
Resolution-Fix-Available
Resolution-Fix-Committed
Resolution-No-Repro
Resolution-Won't-Fix
Severity-Blocking
Severity-Crash
Severity-DataLoss
spam
this-will-be-a-breaking-change
Tracking-External
WindowsTerminal_Win32
Work-Item
zAskModeBug
zInbox-Bug
No Label Resolution-Duplicate
Milestone
No items
No Milestone
Projects
Clear projects
No project
Assignees
Clear assignees
claunia
No Assignees
1 Participants
Notifications
Due Date
No due date set.
Dependencies

No dependencies set.

Reference: starred/terminal#19838
Delete Branch "%!s()"

Deleting a branch is permanent. Although the deleted branch may continue to exist for a short time before it actually gets removed, it CANNOT be undone in most cases. Continue?