Headless TTY

A headless terminal emulator for native Windows that keeps isatty() returning true for spawned processes while staying completely invisible — or tucked away in the system tray. It creates a real pseudo-terminal through Windows ConPTY, so output is captured programmatically, ANSI escape codes pass through correctly, and no console window ever appears.

Why it matters

Plenty of CLI tools check isatty() to decide how to behave: Claude CLI requires a TTY for interactive mode, Git only colours output on a TTY, and any Node app built on the Ink TUI framework needs one. Hide a console the usual way (redirected stdin/stdout) and all of that breaks. Headless TTY hides the console without lying about the terminal.

Everyday uses

You don't have to be a C++ developer. Anywhere you'd build a bat-plus-vbs contraption to launch something console-free at startup, this is one command:

headless-tty.exe -- python main.py
headless-tty.exe -- powershell ".\myscript.ps1"
headless-tty.exe --sys-tray -- python -u main.py

The --sys-tray mode (v2.5.0) runs a long-lived process hidden behind a tray icon — right-click to show a full-colour console for logs when you want it, hide it again when you don't. If the child process exits, the icon cleans itself up.

Install

winget install Revoconner.HeadlessTTY, or grab a build from the GitHub releases. The ConPTY wrapper is also usable as a C++ library in your own projects, with a small API for spawning, reading output via callback, resizing, and lifecycle management. Needs Windows 10 1809 or newer.