How do i make my C program run in the background on windows?

Question

I need my C program to run in the background, so without any open window or without blocking the terminal if run from there.

I can't find much info on how to do it online.

edit: To do what i needed, i just added -mwindows to the gcc command.

Answer 1

Windows supports two program types; GUI and console.

Console applications automatically get a console window if the parent process does not already have one.

GUI applications do not get a console and they can have 0, 1 or multiple windows. If you don't create a window your application is basically only visible in Task manager. GUI applications typically use WinMain as the startup function instead of main . Notepad.exe is a GUI application that creates a window.

You need to tell the compiler/linker that you are creating a GUI program. If you are using Visual Studio, it probably has a project template you can use.