Running a process in pythonw with Popen without a console

I have a program with a GUI that runs an external program through a Popen call:

p = subprocess.Popen("<commands>" , stdout=subprocess.PIPE , stderr=subprocess.PIPE , cwd=os.getcwd())
p.communicate()

But a console pops up, regardless of what I do (I’ve also tried passing it NUL for the file handle). Is there any way to do that without getting the binary I call to free its console?

Answers:

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Method 1

From here:

import subprocess

def launchWithoutConsole(command, args):
    """Launches 'command' windowless and waits until finished"""
    startupinfo = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
    startupinfo.dwFlags |= subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
    return subprocess.Popen([command] + args, startupinfo=startupinfo).wait()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # test with "pythonw.exe"
    launchWithoutConsole("d:\bin\gzip.exe", ["-d", "myfile.gz"])

Note that sometimes suppressing the console makes subprocess calls fail with “Error 6: invalid handle”. A quick fix is to redirect stdin, as explained here: Python running as Windows Service: OSError: [WinError 6] The handle is invalid

Method 2

just do subprocess.Popen([command], shell=True)

Method 3

This works nicely in the win32api. The other solutions were not working for me.

import win32api
chrome = ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe""
args = "https://stackoverflow.com"

win32api.WinExec(chrome + " " + args)

Method 4

According to Python 2.7 documentation and Python 3.7 documentation, you can influence how Popen creates the process by setting creationflags. In particular, the CREATE_NO_WINDOW flag would be useful to you.

variable = subprocess.Popen(
   "CMD COMMAND", 
   stdout = subprocess.PIPE, creationflags = subprocess.CREATE_NO_WINDOW
)

Method 5

You might be able to just do subprocess.Popen([command], shell=False).

That’s what I use anyways. Saves you all the nonsense of setting flags and whatnot.
Once named as a .pyw or run with pythonw it shouldn’t open a console.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0