Hiding the black window in C++

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Create an Application without a Window
Win32 programming hiding console window

How can I hide the console window that appears when I run my C++ program? The program doesn't output anything to stdout, and I don't need that black window to appear each time I run the program. I don't want it to be minimized I want it to be invisible. Any ideas?

This is platform-dependent. Are you talking about Windows? – R. Martinho Fernandes Jan 20 '12 at 17:00 — R. Martinho Fernandes, Jan 20 '12 at 17:00

parapura rajkumar · Answer 1 · 2012-01-20T17:10:38.890

16

If you want to hide the console you can call FreeConsole on windows

#include <Windows.h>

int main()
{
    FreeConsole();
    //other stuff
}

As David mentioned this might flash for a brief second. If you don't want that you can create a windows service or a windows gui application and not create a window like below

#include <windows.h>

int WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,
                     HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                     LPTSTR    lpCmdLine,
                     int       nCmdShow)
{
    //do stuff here
    return 0;
}

edited Jan 20 '12 at 17:10

answered Jan 20 '12 at 17:01

parapura rajkumar

24,045
1
55
85

3

This still shows the console window for a split second – David Heffernan Jan 20 '12 at 17:05
1

FreeConsole is gold! thanks for the tip. I'm fine with a brief flash... – dsynkd Jan 24 '12 at 06:02

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 20 '12 at 17:03

5

It sounds like the problem is that you are creating a console application. These come with a console by default. They either inherit the console of the process that called them, if it has one, or otherwise create a new console.

You should make your application target the GUI subsystem rather than the console subsystem. This doesn't mean that you have to show any GUI. It's perfectly reasonable and commonplace to make an application that targets the GUI subsytem but does not show any windows.

answered Jan 20 '12 at 17:03

David Heffernan

601,492
42
1,072
1,490

Also note that a GUI cannot read from or write to the console (if any) that launched it. – Mooing Duck Jan 20 '12 at 17:15
@David But if I have a requirement of console based app only, but without flickering the console window, can it be achieved? – foobar May 23 '15 at 17:23

Hiding the black window in C++

2 Answers2