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pythonsubprocess

How do you hide the terminals that spawn from subprocess.run?

I have packaged my python application into a standalone executable with pyinstaller and every time subprocess.run is called, a terminal pops up, then disappears when the command finished executing. This can be quite distracting when dozens of terminals spawn in quick succession. How do I keep these terminals from showing?

Example

script.py

import subprocess
command = ["powershell", "-Command", "Get-ChildItem"]
subprocess.run(command)

PS> pyinstaller script.py

double click on dist\script\script.exe

Solution

  • subprocess.run instantiates Popen and forwards *popenargs and **kwargs to Popen. The keyword argurment startupinfo has some flags that can be used to suppress displaying the terminal window. Setting these flags in startupinfo successfully hides the windows.

    import subprocess 
hide_window = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
hide_window.dwFlags |= subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
hide_window.wShowWindow = subprocess.SW_HIDE

command = [ ... ]

subprocess.run(command, startupinfo=hide_window)