General Info
Window Hider is one of my bits of free software I have for this site. The basic idea behind Window Hider is that you have some programs you like to run, but that maybe your boss doesn’t like you to run. Be it games or just Internet Explorer tuned to your favorite website or video streaming site. Now you probably wish you had a way to prevent your boss from seeing them beyond the quick and dirty close them all as he walked into the office method.
That is why I have written Window Hider. You give Window Hider a list of programs and a shortcut key then when it detects you pressing that shortcut key it hides those windows in your list. Window Hider also, as a recent addition, will hide all the programs in your list if you put your mouse in the upper left hand corner of your window. You can filter the windows by title text as well.
As a recent feature you can now set up a combination of keys that will kill all the hidden windows, sorta a last chance safe guard if you will. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoy the fruits of my computer programming.
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Download WinHider 1.3.1.7 – New feature kill programs key combo
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Here is a screen shot of the main window
And here is the new and improved add process window. Dragging the blue man icon over another window will fill in the Process Name and Process Title for you to make it easier to create your list of processes. The Process Title does not have to match exactly, it will search for a title containing whatever you put there, you can also leave the Process Title blank to match all of them.
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This will surely come handy…. Thnx!!
mine doesn’t hide all the windows in the list of processes? help?
If I have the windows open, I thought that it would hide them, but instead it leaves them up on the screen. The ‘hiding’ that it does is simply to remove them from the list of running programs.
Is there a way to get it to hide the open windows as well ??
Thanks.
It should hide the windows from view on the screen. One thing to check is that your title’s match on your processes you added to window hider or that the title is blank on the window hider dialog because that will make it match any of the processes regardless of title.
How can You hide winhider itsself.
Thanks.
At the moment I generally just run with window hider minimized which minimizes it to the task bar. If people want it though i can add an option that hides itself whenever the hide is triggered. Also out of curiosity, would it be helpful to have an option to not show the task bar icon?
It would be amazingly more useful if the program itself could be hidden.
It would be good if it saved the settings so next time i start the app I don’t have to reconfigure windows and shortcut keys to hide them. I guess it would need to be installable to do this.
For those of you who want to hide the app I recommend minimizing it and setting it’s notification icon to be hidden.
It should save the settings in a file in your user directory. It doesn’t need to be installable to do this and really any level of permissions should be able to do it as well. Try adding a couple of processes to the list and then immediately closing the program and then reopening it. The saving of most of the settings happens when the program is closed.
Seems like Windows Hider does not work with Vista or something as it always resulted in an “Unhandled exception”. Otherwise, the apps is awesome when I used in on my XP.
^^ Please ignore my above comment, it was accidentally submitted. ^^
I’m having a bit of a problem. For the first couple times I tried it, it worked great, until I closed it. I reopened it several times and renamed the process “firefox.exe” as I had done before, but for one reason or another, it didn’t work. I set the hotkey as the Oemtilde from the key I had originally set as, F5, but even when I tried setting the hotkey as F5 again, it still yielded the same results, which was to do nothing.
Try using “firefox” instead of “firefox.exe” when using the windows api to request processes by name it expects the extention to be left off. And since I am using the Windows API behind the scene that is probably the problem.
Cheers
One feature request – In windows vista and windows 7 you can mute individual applications. It would be great if the application also muted when it is hidden.
I just noticed that sometimes if the window your hiding is already minimized, it wont get hidden when you hit the hotkey, just the maximized windows.
now everything works well, even on vista.
i quote rob saying that it would be great if the application also muted when it is hidden and i have one feature request: is it possible to add a hotkey to show hidden programs?
Leo, do you mean that you want a hotkey that can be specifically assigned only to “Show Window” and not hide? Also I have done some looking into the sound stuff and it looked a bit beyond me. I will take another look with windows 7, they made some nice improvements to the sound system in 7.
Yes, Josh. i mean that an hotkey assigned to “Show Window” will be great.
Moving the mouse in the upper left corner i hide every window. If there wuold be an hotkey that allows to show programs i hid that would be great! So i can show windows as fast as i do hiding them.
Even without this “feature” your work is really excellent
So i can make a new process, but once i make two or more hot keys for other processes it will just do the same thing that it does for the first process… No matter what hot key.
For example when i make one firefox, then try to make another but with a different site, the first hot key that i did will work with both. No matter what hot key i use, even if they are different.
Am i typing something wrong or what?
thanks
winhider closes immediately when i open it…
help?