Show/Hide the console window of a C# console application

Question

I googled around for information on how to hide one’s own console window. Amazingly, the only solutions I could find were hacky solutions that involved FindWindow()

Answer 1

You could do the reversed and set the Application output type to: Windows Application. Then add this code to the beginning of the application.

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", EntryPoint = "GetStdHandle", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern IntPtr GetStdHandle(int nStdHandle);

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", EntryPoint = "AllocConsole", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern int AllocConsole();

private const int STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE = -11;
private const int MY_CODE_PAGE = 437;
private static bool showConsole = true; //Or false if you don't want to see the console

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    if (showConsole)
    {
        AllocConsole();
        IntPtr stdHandle = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
        Microsoft.Win32.SafeHandles.SafeFileHandle safeFileHandle = new Microsoft.Win32.SafeHandles.SafeFileHandle(stdHandle, true);
        FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(safeFileHandle, FileAccess.Write);
        System.Text.Encoding encoding = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding(MY_CODE_PAGE);
        StreamWriter standardOutput = new StreamWriter(fileStream, encoding);
        standardOutput.AutoFlush = true;
        Console.SetOut(standardOutput);
    }

    //Your application code
}

This code will show the Console if showConsole is true