How to start a UWP app with a global shortcut through a background Win32 process?

Question

I am working on a UWP screen recorder, I need a global shortcut (keyboard hotkey) that just launches the app, so I need a background process that runs from start-up, allowing me to launch the app at any time. I don't need to perform any in-app action. I could find some tutorials about global shortcuts in uwp apps, but they refer only to in-app actions and the Win32 process doesn't run with the app closed, so I couldn't figure out how to do with my app.

Answer 1

Stefan Wick (form MSFT) had a detailed blog post about how you can do this.

• https://stefanwick.com/2018/05/15/global-hotkey-registration-in-uwp/

As he mentions at the end of the blog post, another SO thread was the inspiration:

• Global hotkeys in windowless .NET app