How do I take out the focus or minimize a window with Python?

Question

I need to get focus to a specified window, and the only way I'm seeing on my head, is minimizing all windows on front of it until I get the right one...

How can I do it?

Windows 7, and no specific toolkit....

Every type of window, for example, firefox and console command

You need to provide much, much information than you have for this question to be answerable. Which windowing system? Windows, X Windows? A specific toolkit like wxPython or Tk? — Adam Crossland, May 07 '10 at 20:33

score 18 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 03 '23 at 10:29

You'll need to enumerate through the windows and match the title of the window to get the one you want. The code below searches for a window with "firefox" in the title and sets the focus on it:

import win32gui

toplist = []
winlist = []
def enum_callback(hwnd, results):
    winlist.append((hwnd, win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd)))

win32gui.EnumWindows(enum_callback, toplist)
firefox = [(hwnd, title) for hwnd, title in winlist if 'firefox' in title.lower()]
# just grab the first window that matches
firefox = firefox[0]
# use the window handle to set focus
win32gui.SetForegroundWindow(firefox[0])

To minimize the window, use the following line:

import win32con
win32gui.ShowWindow(firefox[0], win32con.SW_MINIMIZE)

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 08 '18 at 09:04

You'll need to enumerate through the windows and match the title of the window to get the one you want. The code below searches for a window with "firefox" in the title and sets the focus

To minimize the window use the following line:

def enumHandler(hwnd, lParam):
   if 'firefox' in win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd):
      win32gui.ShowWindow(hwnd, win32con.SW_MINIMIZE)

win32gui.EnumWindows(enumHandler, None)

This works for Windows 10, Python3.5 32bit, pywin32‑223.

I reported the above case, but an error occurred.

Traceback (most recent call last):

TypeError: The object is not a PyHANDLE object

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 07 '10 at 20:48

I'm assuming from the question, that you want to write a generic to that can work with any window from any application.

You might want to try the Python Win32 GUI Automation library. I haven't used it but sounds like it might be what you are looking for. If that doesn't work, your best option might be forgo python and use a tool like AutoIt that provides built in support for window manipulation.

If neither of those solutions work you will probable have to directly invoke windows api. I do not know if the win32api package wraps the necessary functionality, otherwise you will have write a python module in c/c++.

If this kind of functionality is available in the .net api, you could use IronPython.

I'm already using the win32gui module, but I'm not being able to make something.... I didnt found any command like, minimize, or something with take out the focus, only getfocus and setfocus =/ — Bruno 'Shady', May 07 '10 at 21:10

How do I take out the focus or minimize a window with Python?

3 Answers3

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