How to hide a console application in C#

Question

I have a console application in C#, and I want that the user won\'t be able to see it.

How can I do that?

Answer 1

You can Pinvoke a call to FindWindow() to get a handle to your window and then call ShowWindow() to hide the window OR Start your application from another one using ProcessStartInfo.CreateNoWindow

Answer 2

Compile it as a Windows Forms application. Then it won't display any UI, if you do not explicitly open any Windows.

Answer 3

Create a console application "MyAppProxy" with following code, and put MyAppProxy in start up dir,

public static void main(string[] args)
{
   Process p = new Process("MyApp");
   ProcessStartUpInfo pinfo = new ProcessStartUpInfo();
   p.StartupInfo = pinfo;
   pinfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
   pinfo.ShellExecute = false;

   p.RaiseEvents = true;

   AutoResetEvent wait = new AutoResetEvent(false);
   p.ProcessExit += (s,e)=>{ wait.Set(); };

   p.Start();
   wait.WaitOne();
}

You may need to fix certain items here as I didnt check correctness of the code, it may not compile because some property names may be different, but hope you get the idea.

Answer 4

The best way is to start the process without window.

        Process p = new Process();
        p.StartInfo.FileName = "cmd.exe";
        p.StartInfo.Arguments = "echo Hello!";
        //either..
        p.StartInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
        //or..
        p.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
        p.Start();

See other probable solutions -

Toggle Process.StartInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden at runtime

and,

Bring another processes Window to foreground when it has ShowInTaskbar = false

Answer 5

Create a wcf service and host it as per your need.

Answer 6

On ProjectProperties set Output Type as Windows Application.