[Feature Request] Add setting to hide terminal window to the shell plugin

[DavidGBrett]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

See the original issue #4506
The user (@LinguaOccultus) doesn't want to see the terminal window popup while a command is running.

Describe the solution you'd like

There should be some kind of setting added to the shell plugin that hides the window terminal at all times.
This would unfortunately be broad stroke, as users may want it still to show for certain commands but that can be considered out of scope of this for now, and may not even be possible to implement.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Setting "Do not close Command Prompt after command execution" to false, but this doesn't hide the window while the command is running even if only briefly.

[jjw24]

This needs some thought.

1. If you run command without ever showing the window, we probably need some way to notify the user, maybe show a pop up message to indicate success?

2. How do we handle errored commands, show window or pop up? (I think whichever is the simpler design)

3. Generally when you run command, you would want to see output and progress, no? so I don't know if it's desirable behaviour.

[DavidGBrett]

I agree, this would be a difficult feature to design correctly.

Showing at least any error output in a windows notification makes sense to me
I'm unsure if we should have success notifications given the aim for a minimal feel

We could have this be a context menu option to run with or without terminal and then have the setting just change the default behaviour so users can still easily get output if they need it

Some commands do perhaps make sense to run without checking the terminal such as launching an app with flags

It would be great if @LinguaOccultus could add his perspective on those limitations

[DavidGBrett]

One thing of note, a user in Feature Request #187 mentioned they wanted that feature so they could use this no window console
https://github.com/SeidChr/RunHiddenConsole

[LinguaOccultus]

@jjw24 @DavidGBrett I stumbled into this situation just by chance; as I explained in my initial report, the only thing different is, that I set up my whole system and every app from scratch. In this process, I found a way to make the Windows Terminal (not the one preinstalled in Windows 11 but https://github.com/microsoft/terminal) my default one.

I'm using Flow Launcher the very same way with the same settings as before, but now, when I use it as Win + R replacement and for commands, I briefly see the terminal popping up what it didn't before (or something else has changed also without me being aware of).

I could set to auto-close the terminal on errors in the PWSH profiles advanced settings but there seems to be no setting to prevent this simple command execution behaviour and completely hide the terminal. There also is no way to setup Flow Launcher to do so.

I first thought I did something wrong on my end, but I haven't found any difference in how I use Flow Launcher or set it up. I expected a simple setting wether in the console or Flow Launcher to simply hide the terminal as it is found in many other apps also, but that does not seem to be possible at the moment.

Having such a setting, each user then could simply set it as desired. I understand why seeing errors is important, but I would simply enable such a setting – compared to enable logging for diaganostics – when needed. And why should I ever want to see the terminal at all when there is NO error? Its only showing up for less than a second and has no content or it cannot be red so quickly anyway. There would be an option needed as »do not auto-close on command execution (even when no error)« to make this useful.

Whenever I use Flow Launcher for anything else, this is not the case and no problem; only all commands like »winver« and such.