I'm adding this question after spending an entire day wrestling with this incredibly frustrating feature of the Windows 10 command prompt which made me think there was something wrong with my console application code. I hope it will help someone.
Issue: My console application seems to randomly stop running. What is going on?
The issue ended up being a new feature of the windows 10 console. Under the default config, whenever you click on a command window in windows 10, it immediately halts the application process when it attempts to write to the console. When this happens, the command window has gone into "selection" mode.
You can tell it has happened because it will prefix the title bar of the command window with the word "Select" :
To get your program running again, you have to press escape or click somewhere else.
To get rid of this strange behavior, you can disable QuickEdit mode:
What I'd like to add here to Shaun Rowan's answer is that for it to work in all console windows you have to click "Defaults", instead of "Properties" and make your changes there, as described in this post.
I faced this problem very recently where one of the users (who had Quickedit configured on his Command Prompt) was using a tool I developed in Java, and was getting the tool frozen while running it from command prompt.
Finally what solved the problem was to redirect the logging inside the batch script to a file as shown below:
@echo off
...
java.exe -jar mytool.jar
needed to be updated to
java.exe -jar mytool.jar > log.txt
SetConsoleMode (kernel32.dll). –
Wino It's possible to disable the annoying QuickEdit Mode programmatically by importing Windows' Kernel32.dll library and using the console API functions GetStdHandle, GetConsoleMode, and SetConsoleMode through your language's native interface (e.g., Java's JNI, Python ctypes).
ctypes:Short (disables everything except EXTENDED_FLAGS). Read SetConsoleMode documentation for more detail.
import ctypes
kernel32 = ctypes.windll.kernel32
kernel32.SetConsoleMode(kernel32.GetStdHandle(-10), 0x80)
Longer (disables QUICK_EDIT_MODE without altering other settings)
import ctypes
import time
import threading
# Constants
STD_INPUT_HANDLE = -10
# Enum for ConsoleModes
class ConsoleModes(ctypes.c_uint):
ENABLE_PROCESSED_INPUT = 0x1
ENABLE_LINE_INPUT = 0x2
ENABLE_ECHO_INPUT = 0x4
ENABLE_WINDOW_INPUT = 0x8
ENABLE_MOUSE_INPUT = 0x10
ENABLE_INSERT_MODE = 0x20
ENABLE_QUICK_EDIT_MODE = 0x40
ENABLE_EXTENDED_FLAGS = 0x80
ENABLE_AUTO_POSITION = 0x100
# Import kernel32.dll functions
kernel32 = ctypes.windll.kernel32
GetStdHandle = kernel32.GetStdHandle
GetConsoleMode = kernel32.GetConsoleMode
SetConsoleMode = kernel32.SetConsoleMode
def disable_quick_edit_mode():
std_in = GetStdHandle(STD_INPUT_HANDLE)
mode = ctypes.c_uint()
if GetConsoleMode(std_in, ctypes.byref(mode)):
if mode.value & ConsoleModes.ENABLE_QUICK_EDIT_MODE:
mode.value ^= ConsoleModes.ENABLE_QUICK_EDIT_MODE
SetConsoleMode(std_in, mode)
def print_numbers():
i = 0
while True:
time.sleep(0.3)
print(i)
i += 1
def main():
disable_quick_edit_mode()
threading.Thread(target=print_numbers).start()
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Keep in mind that this code only runs on Windows. If you are writing software to be run on multiple operating systems, make sure to safeguard against errors.
I know this is an old question, but the provided answers are overcomplicated. This behavior can be changed with a single registry value.
In CMD prompt type the following:
REG add "HKCU\Console" /v QuickEdit /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
I must point out that the application is actually not "halted" or "paused", it's only because the console output stream is blocked whenever you click on the command window, and if you see the whole application pausing, it's because these programs don't implement multithreading and non-blocking IO correctly.
You can easily verify this by writing a multi-threading application. For example, the following Java application shows a login dialog and continues to output text on the console. When the console blocks, you can still interact with the GUI.
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JPasswordField;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
public class SwingLoginExample {
public static void main(String[] args) {
new Thread(() -> {
var i = 0;
while (true) {
i++;
System.out.println("Hello World! " + i); // System.out.println is a blocking method in java
}
}).start();
JFrame frame = new JFrame("Login Example");
// Setting the width and height of frame
frame.setSize(350, 200);
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
JPanel panel = new JPanel();
frame.add(panel);
placeComponents(panel);
frame.setVisible(true);
}
private static void placeComponents(JPanel panel) {
panel.setLayout(null);
JLabel userLabel = new JLabel("User:");
userLabel.setBounds(10,20,80,25);
panel.add(userLabel);
JTextField userText = new JTextField(20);
userText.setBounds(100,20,165,25);
panel.add(userText);
JLabel passwordLabel = new JLabel("Password:");
passwordLabel.setBounds(10,50,80,25);
panel.add(passwordLabel);
JPasswordField passwordText = new JPasswordField(20);
passwordText.setBounds(100,50,165,25);
panel.add(passwordText);
JButton loginButton = new JButton("login");
loginButton.setBounds(10, 80, 80, 25);
panel.add(loginButton);
}
}
You should always avoid calling print() or similar methods directly; if the console responds slowly, your program will be slowed down as a result. Create a thread to perform the print() task, or use a non-blocking alternative.
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