How to start a console-based process and apply a custom title using Powershell

Question

I am converting an old cmd command to Powershell, and currently use:

START "My Title" Path/To/ConsoleApp.exe

This works as expected to launch ConsoleApp with My Title as it's window title. This has been replaced with Start-Process which works correctly, but does not provide a mechanism to change the title.

Is there another way to do this without resorting to using the cmd command?

Answer 1

There is a small quirk when changing the text of the process' main window: if you try to change the text straight after you have started the process, it may fail due to one of many possible reasons (e.g. the handle to the control which displays the text does not exist at the time of the function call). So the solution is to use the WaitForInputIdle() method before trying to change the text:

Add-Type -TypeDefinition @"
using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

public static class Win32Api
{
    [DllImport("User32.dll", EntryPoint = "SetWindowText")]
    public static extern int SetWindowText(IntPtr hWnd, string text);
}
"@

$process = Start-Process -FilePath "notepad.exe" -PassThru
$process.WaitForInputIdle()
[Win32Api]::SetWindowText($process.MainWindowHandle, "My Custom Text")

Be aware that the application itself can still change the window text after you have made your own change.

Answer 2

I tried this with cmd.exe and it worked well.

Add-Type -Type @"
using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
namespace WT {
   public class Temp {
      [DllImport("user32.dll")]
      public static extern bool SetWindowText(IntPtr hWnd, string lpString); 
   }
}
"@

$cmd = Start-Process cmd -PassThru
[wt.temp]::SetWindowText($cmd.MainWindowHandle, 'some text')

Answer 3

$host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = "new title"

As already been said by George, anything/anyone can set it back (like custom prompt functions for example).

Answer 4

If you want to spawn a process with powershell with a custom title try:

$StartInfo = new-object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
$StartInfo.FileName = "$pshome\powershell.exe"
$StartInfo.Arguments = "-NoExit -Command `$Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle=`'Your Title Here`'"
[System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($StartInfo)

Note the grave characters that escape the string for the title, they are vital!