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Restrict a main window of a process to a set screen area with PowerShell
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Hello all,
I have a little project that I’m hoping I can do in PowerShell. There are other ways of achieving what I want to do but I also want to learn a bit more about PS and thus a little project is what I need. However I could do with a nudge in the right direction if anyone has some handy hints or pointers to where I can read up on solutions to my problems.I’m trying to write a bit of script that will start a number of processes (four probably) it will size the main window or each process and position them on the screen. I know I could start them then use hotkeys or Snap Assist but I want these applications to be contained in their allotted screen space. Thus if someone presses maximize the app will only go up to the limits of the screen area I’ve set and not the whole available screen.
A possible way of doing this that I’ve thought of is use PS to produce a windows form with panels on it of the right shape and position. I would then start the process inside the panel and thus contain it. I can make the forms and panels no problem it’s the starting the process in the form which is eluding me at the moment. I’ve seen it done in C# but not sure how to convert it over to PS. Does anyone have any tips ? or maybe another way to do it in PS that I haven’t thought of ? Thanks for reading.
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Well, again, most of this is theoretical. But, from a PS point of view, you can generally get the window information with Get-Process.
Here’s an example I found online for this kind of window manipulation.
https://superuser.com/questions/1324007/setting-window-size-and-position-in-powershell-5-and-6
Function Set-Window { <# .SYNOPSIS Retrieve/Set the window size and coordinates of a process window. .DESCRIPTION Retrieve/Set the size (height,width) and coordinates (x,y) of a process window. .PARAMETER ProcessName Name of the process to determine the window characteristics. (All processes if omitted). .PARAMETER Id Id of the process to determine the window characteristics. .PARAMETER X Set the position of the window in pixels from the left. .PARAMETER Y Set the position of the window in pixels from the top. .PARAMETER Width Set the width of the window. .PARAMETER Height Set the height of the window. .PARAMETER Passthru Returns the output object of the window. .NOTES Name: Set-Window Author: Boe Prox Version History: 1.0//Boe Prox - 11/24/2015 - Initial build 1.1//JosefZ - 19.05.2018 - Treats more process instances of supplied process name properly 1.2//JosefZ - 21.02.2019 - Parameter Id .OUTPUTS None System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject System.Object .EXAMPLE Get-Process powershell | Set-Window -X 20 -Y 40 -Passthru -Verbose VERBOSE: powershell (Id=11140, Handle=132410) Id : 11140 ProcessName : powershell Size : 1134,781 TopLeft : 20,40 BottomRight : 1154,821 Description: Set the coordinates on the window for the process PowerShell.exe .EXAMPLE $windowArray = Set-Window -Passthru WARNING: cmd (1096) is minimized! Coordinates will not be accurate. PS C:\>$windowArray | Format-Table -AutoSize Id ProcessName Size TopLeft BottomRight -- ----------- ---- ------- ----------- 1096 cmd 199,34 -32000,-32000 -31801,-31966 4088 explorer 1280,50 0,974 1280,1024 6880 powershell 1280,974 0,0 1280,974 Description: Get the coordinates of all visible windows and save them into the $windowArray variable. Then, display them in a table view. .EXAMPLE Set-Window -Id $PID -Passthru | Format-Table Id ProcessName Size TopLeft BottomRight -- ----------- ---- ------- ----------- 7840 pwsh 1024,638 0,0 1024,638 Description: Display the coordinates of the window for the current PowerShell session in a table view.#> [cmdletbinding(DefaultParameterSetName='Name')] Param ( [parameter(Mandatory=$False, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True, ParameterSetName='Name')] [string]$ProcessName='*', [parameter(Mandatory=$True, ValueFromPipeline=$False, ParameterSetName='Id')] [int]$Id, [int]$X, [int]$Y, [int]$Width, [int]$Height, [switch]$Passthru ) Begin { Try { [void][Window] } Catch { Add-Type @" using System; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; public class Window { [DllImport("user32.dll")] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] public static extern bool GetWindowRect( IntPtr hWnd, out RECT lpRect); [DllImport("user32.dll")] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] public extern static bool MoveWindow( IntPtr handle, int x, int y, int width, int height, bool redraw); [DllImport("user32.dll")] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] public static extern bool ShowWindow( IntPtr handle, int state); } public struct RECT { public int Left; // x position of upper-left corner public int Top; // y position of upper-left corner public int Right; // x position of lower-right corner public int Bottom; // y position of lower-right corner } "@ } } Process { $Rectangle = New-Object RECT If ( $PSBoundParameters.ContainsKey('Id') ) { $Processes = Get-Process -Id $Id -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue } else { $Processes = Get-Process -Name "$ProcessName" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue } if ( $null -eq $Processes ) { If ( $PSBoundParameters['Passthru'] ) { Write-Warning 'No process match criteria specified' } } else { $Processes | ForEach-Object { $Handle = $_.MainWindowHandle Write-Verbose "$($_.ProcessName) `(Id=$($_.Id), Handle=$Handle)" if ( $Handle -eq [System.IntPtr]::Zero ) { return } $Return = [Window]::GetWindowRect($Handle,[ref]$Rectangle) If (-NOT $PSBoundParameters.ContainsKey('X')) { $X = $Rectangle.Left } If (-NOT $PSBoundParameters.ContainsKey('Y')) { $Y = $Rectangle.Top } If (-NOT $PSBoundParameters.ContainsKey('Width')) { $Width = $Rectangle.Right - $Rectangle.Left } If (-NOT $PSBoundParameters.ContainsKey('Height')) { $Height = $Rectangle.Bottom - $Rectangle.Top } If ( $Return ) { $Return = [Window]::MoveWindow($Handle, $x, $y, $Width, $Height,$True) } If ( $PSBoundParameters['Passthru'] ) { $Rectangle = New-Object RECT $Return = [Window]::GetWindowRect($Handle,[ref]$Rectangle) If ( $Return ) { $Height = $Rectangle.Bottom - $Rectangle.Top $Width = $Rectangle.Right - $Rectangle.Left $Size = New-Object System.Management.Automation.Host.Size -ArgumentList $Width, $Height $TopLeft = New-Object System.Management.Automation.Host.Coordinates -ArgumentList $Rectangle.Left , $Rectangle.Top $BottomRight = New-Object System.Management.Automation.Host.Coordinates -ArgumentList $Rectangle.Right, $Rectangle.Bottom If ($Rectangle.Top -lt 0 -AND $Rectangle.Bottom -lt 0 -AND $Rectangle.Left -lt 0 -AND $Rectangle.Right -lt 0) { Write-Warning "$($_.ProcessName) ($($_.Id)`) is minimized! Coordinates will not be accurate." } $Object = [PSCustomObject]@{ Id = $_.Id ProcessName = $_.ProcessName Size = $Size TopLeft = $TopLeft BottomRight = $BottomRight } $Object } } } } } }So, the theory is you grab the window parameters for your application as it starts, and use something like this function to move it within your predefined panels.
Ultimately, AutoIT is better for this than PS.. but it should be possible.
David F.
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And you’re definitely seeing why I recommended AutoIT – there’s much better facilities for handling this kind of thing.
But the API snippet should be this:
case WM_GETMINMAXINFO: { LPMINMAXINFO lpMMI = (LPMINMAXINFO)lParam; lpMMI->ptMinTrackSize.x = 300; lpMMI->ptMinTrackSize.y = 300; }I got that from StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22261804/how-to-set-minimum-window-size-using-winapi which of course led to the MSDN docs 🙂
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winmsg/wm-getminmaxinfo?redirectedfrom=MSDNDavid F.
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good point David. Indeed I have not. A rookie mistake for sometime coming from a VBA background. I’ll stick that in next time I’m in work to see if ti fixes the non responsive occasions. Then it’s just moving and sizing the windows to fill my forms and I could be on tot something. I could probably do this whole thing from VBA within the app itself (IE I short cut a TopRight instance of the application and a BottomLeft ETC….. but as stated I wanted to use it to learn from. However if I can’t bottom the AutoIT or power shell angle I could go half way there then once I’ve moved the application’s parent to my form I could then cheat and use VBA inside the app to move it to 0,0 position and maximise it.. Problem is when I get back to work there will be a list of things I’m meant to be doing to get done and this will interfere with my fiddling.. 🙂
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