[Interesting Usage] Replace the Windows default conhost.exe to OpenConsole.exe

[YihaoPeng]

Since Windows Terminal is currently performing poorly in copying and pasting, I think OpenConsole is my better choice.

However, if you do not run it from OpenConsole, Windows will append the default console host (C:\Windows\System32\conhost.exe) to all console applications.

Then Microsoft said that the source code of OpenConsole comes from conhost.exe, then can we replace conhost.exe directly with OpenConsole.exe? This way we get a better default console host.

I tried it and it works well. Although OpenConsole is packaged as a UWP application, OpenConsole.exe is actually a normal Win32 window program that can be run by double-clicking its exe. You can find it from terminal\bin\x64\Release\OpenConsole.exe if you done a x64 release build.

Then, go to C:\Windows\System32, right-click conhost.exe, "Properties", and edit the permission list to give the current user the "Full Control" permission.

Then, rename conhost.exe to conhost-old.exe and copy OpenConsole.exe to here and rename it to conhost.exe.

Open any console application (powershell, wsl, ...) and enjoy your new console.

[DHowett-MSFT]

You found our secret! We offer no warranty for using openconsole like this!

[luke1961]

Works for me including win 2019 server

[DHowett-MSFT]

It might work all the way down to Windows 8.1. Again, no warranty!

[NotWearingPants]

The open issue of this is #492
(for people coming here from search)

[brian6932]

Sometimes opening OpenConsole just results in nothing opening, not sure what the cause was.
I got the following error when attempting to launch cmd or pwsh with OpenConsole as conhost when the issue happened:

I can no longer reproduce it.

[zadjii-msft]

@brian6932 That can't possibly be the right commit, or at the very least, that's happenstance. The only two code changes in v1.17.11391.0...v1.17.11461.0 are firmly in Terminal-only code. None of that's compiled into OpenConsole.exe at all...

[brian6932]

Ok, it seems like it wasn't even a tag issue, I'm not sure what causes that, but somehow the older OpenConsole releases didn't exhibit it, now the newest pre-release and release are working fine again 😓

[zadjii-msft]

Glad it went away? 😅