Skip to content

Conversation

@Alekseev2014s
Copy link

Automatically hides all windows and shows the desktop after a period of user inactivity


- excludeProcesses: ""
$name: Excluded processes
$description: Semicolon-separated list of executable names to exclude from triggering desktop show (e.g. "vlc.exe;notepad.exe")
Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Why not use an array instead? For example:

- excludedPrograms: [excluded1.exe]
$name: Excluded programs

Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Update the description, it's no longer a semicolon-separated list.

Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

In the most recent update, you changed some other description, but not this one (search for "Semicolon" in the code).


- excludeProcesses: ""
$name: Excluded processes
$description: Semicolon-separated list of executable names to exclude from triggering desktop show (e.g. "vlc.exe;notepad.exe")
Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Update the description, it's no longer a semicolon-separated list.

wchar_t settingName[64];
swprintf(settingName, ARRAYSIZE(settingName), L"excludedPrograms[%d]", i);

const wchar_t* item = Wh_GetStringSetting(settingName);
Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

You never free it with Wh_FreeStringSetting.

Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

You need to call it even when an empty string is returned.

@m417z m417z mentioned this pull request May 18, 2025
@m417z
Copy link
Member

m417z commented May 23, 2025

This mod has no good reason to run as part of explorer.exe, except that it's convenient. We discussed it here: #1916 (comment)

This mod is injected into explorer and runs as part of it. This is suboptimal for the following reasons:

  • There can be more than one explorer.exe process in case the "launch folder windows in separate process" option is enabled, and for other reasons.
  • This mod doesn't have a good reason to be injected into explorer.exe, it's just convenient. But by doing so, a mistake or instability in the mod affects the whole shell.

This is not the first mod to take this approach. Here are other recent mods:

And maybe also:

All three mods could be separate tools, they don't use and don't need Windhawk's injection and hooking capabilities. On the other hand, I can understand that the ease of mod installation is appealing. I wonder if Windhawk needs to come up with a new type of mods which run as part of a dedicated process.

Currently, Windhawk doesn't have a built-in functionality for something like that, but for now, I implemented some code that can be added to a mod to make it run as part of a separate windhawk.exe process:

Details

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Windhawk tool mod implementation for mods which don't need to inject to other
// processes or hook other functions. Context:
// https://github.com/ramensoftware/windhawk-mods/pull/1916
//
// The mod will load and run in a dedicated windhawk.exe process.
//
// Paste the code below as part of the mod code, and use these callbacks:
// * WhTool_ModInit
// * WhTool_ModSettingsChanged
// * WhTool_ModUninit
//
// Currently, other callbacks are not supported.

bool g_isToolModProcessLauncher;
HANDLE g_toolModProcessMutex;

void WINAPI EntryPoint_Hook() {
    Wh_Log(L">");
    ExitThread(0);
}

BOOL Wh_ModInit() {
    bool isService = false;
    bool isToolModProcess = false;
    bool isCurrentToolModProcess = false;
    int argc;
    LPWSTR* argv = CommandLineToArgvW(GetCommandLine(), &argc);
    if (!argv) {
        Wh_Log(L"CommandLineToArgvW failed");
        return FALSE;
    }

    for (int i = 1; i < argc; i++) {
        if (wcscmp(argv[i], L"-service") == 0) {
            isService = true;
            break;
        }
    }

    for (int i = 1; i < argc - 1; i++) {
        if (wcscmp(argv[i], L"-tool-mod") == 0) {
            isToolModProcess = true;
            if (wcscmp(argv[i + 1], WH_MOD_ID) == 0) {
                isCurrentToolModProcess = true;
            }
            break;
        }
    }

    LocalFree(argv);

    if (isService) {
        return FALSE;
    }

    if (isCurrentToolModProcess) {
        g_toolModProcessMutex =
            CreateMutex(nullptr, TRUE, L"windhawk-tool-mod_" WH_MOD_ID);
        if (!g_toolModProcessMutex) {
            Wh_Log(L"CreateMutex failed");
            ExitProcess(1);
        }

        if (GetLastError() == ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS) {
            Wh_Log(L"Tool mod already running (%s)", WH_MOD_ID);
            ExitProcess(1);
        }

        if (!WhTool_ModInit()) {
            ExitProcess(1);
        }

        IMAGE_DOS_HEADER* dosHeader =
            (IMAGE_DOS_HEADER*)GetModuleHandle(nullptr);
        IMAGE_NT_HEADERS* ntHeaders =
            (IMAGE_NT_HEADERS*)((BYTE*)dosHeader + dosHeader->e_lfanew);

        DWORD entryPointRVA = ntHeaders->OptionalHeader.AddressOfEntryPoint;
        void* entryPoint = (BYTE*)dosHeader + entryPointRVA;

        Wh_SetFunctionHook(entryPoint, (void*)EntryPoint_Hook, nullptr);
        return TRUE;
    }

    if (isToolModProcess) {
        return FALSE;
    }

    g_isToolModProcessLauncher = true;
    return TRUE;
}

void Wh_ModAfterInit() {
    if (!g_isToolModProcessLauncher) {
        return;
    }

    WCHAR currentProcessPath[MAX_PATH];
    switch (GetModuleFileName(nullptr, currentProcessPath,
                              ARRAYSIZE(currentProcessPath))) {
        case 0:
        case ARRAYSIZE(currentProcessPath):
            Wh_Log(L"GetModuleFileName failed");
            return;
    }

    WCHAR
    commandLine[MAX_PATH + 2 +
                (sizeof(L" -tool-mod \"" WH_MOD_ID "\"") / sizeof(WCHAR)) - 1];
    swprintf_s(commandLine, L"\"%s\" -tool-mod \"%s\"", currentProcessPath,
               WH_MOD_ID);

    HMODULE kernelModule = GetModuleHandle(L"kernelbase.dll");
    if (!kernelModule) {
        kernelModule = GetModuleHandle(L"kernel32.dll");
        if (!kernelModule) {
            Wh_Log(L"No kernelbase.dll/kernel32.dll");
            return;
        }
    }

    using CreateProcessInternalW_t = BOOL(WINAPI*)(
        HANDLE hUserToken, LPCWSTR lpApplicationName, LPWSTR lpCommandLine,
        LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpProcessAttributes,
        LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpThreadAttributes, WINBOOL bInheritHandles,
        DWORD dwCreationFlags, LPVOID lpEnvironment, LPCWSTR lpCurrentDirectory,
        LPSTARTUPINFOW lpStartupInfo,
        LPPROCESS_INFORMATION lpProcessInformation,
        PHANDLE hRestrictedUserToken);
    CreateProcessInternalW_t pCreateProcessInternalW =
        (CreateProcessInternalW_t)GetProcAddress(kernelModule,
                                                 "CreateProcessInternalW");
    if (!pCreateProcessInternalW) {
        Wh_Log(L"No CreateProcessInternalW");
        return;
    }

    STARTUPINFO si{
        .cb = sizeof(STARTUPINFO),
        .dwFlags = STARTF_FORCEOFFFEEDBACK,
    };
    PROCESS_INFORMATION pi;
    if (!pCreateProcessInternalW(nullptr, currentProcessPath, commandLine,
                                 nullptr, nullptr, FALSE, NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,
                                 nullptr, nullptr, &si, &pi, nullptr)) {
        Wh_Log(L"CreateProcess failed");
        return;
    }

    CloseHandle(pi.hProcess);
    CloseHandle(pi.hThread);
}

void Wh_ModSettingsChanged() {
    if (g_isToolModProcessLauncher) {
        return;
    }

    WhTool_ModSettingsChanged();
}

void Wh_ModUninit() {
    if (g_isToolModProcessLauncher) {
        return;
    }

    WhTool_ModUninit();
    ExitProcess(0);
}

Please do the following:

  • Add the code above at the end of your mod code
  • Replace Wh_ModInit, Wh_ModSettingsChanged, Wh_ModUninit in your code to WhTool_*, e.g. WhTool_ModInit
  • Change the target process from explorer.exe to windhawk.exe
  • Remove the FindCurrentProcessTaskbarWnd check, as it's now guaranteed that only one instance will be running

Please try it and let me know if it behaves as expected in all cases. If it is, let's adapt it. In the future, such functionality might become part of Windhawk.

@Alekseev2014s
Copy link
Author

I stopped working because it turned out that IsDesktopVisible() does not work correctly on Windows 10. On 11 everything is fine. I was unable to quickly implement support for 10. I will continue working as soon as I have time.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

2 participants