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.