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Windows: render opens a visible chrome-headless-shell console window for the whole render #5653
Description
Version: hyperframes 0.8.17 (CLI via npx), Windows 11 Pro
What happens
hyperframes render --low-memory-mode --no-browser-gpu opens a visible console window titled with the path to chrome-headless-shell.exe. It stays open for the whole render. When Windows Terminal is the default terminal, a second "Terminal" host window opens as well. On long renders these windows sit over whatever the user is doing. Closing them aborts the render.
Expected
No visible window: the browser is headless, and @puppeteer/browsers already passes windowsHide: true when it spawns it.
What we ruled out, one change at a time
- Starting the render from a parent process created with
CREATE_NO_WINDOW, so the CLI and its children have a hidden console to inherit. The window still opens. HYPERFRAMES_NO_TELEMETRY=1andDO_NOT_TRACK=1. Telemetry was already off. The window still opens.- Setting the Windows default terminal to Console Host instead of Windows Terminal. The "Terminal" host window goes away, but a plain console window titled
chrome-headless-shell.exestill opens.
Repro
Any project: npx [email protected] render --low-memory-mode --no-browser-gpu -o out.mp4 from a shell that is not itself a visible console (for example a background job). Watch for new top-level windows during the render.
Side note
The telemetry sender is spawned with detached: true and no windowsHide, which would open a window on Windows when telemetry is on.
Activity
jrusso1020 commentedon Oct 24, 2026
Thanks for the careful elimination steps. The report says 0.8.17, which is an old release, and several Windows console fixes have landed since then (including #4028 for the browser launch). Could you rerun with
npx hyperframes@latest render --low-memory-mode --no-browser-gpu -o out.mp4and tell us the exact version printed and whether the chrome-headless-shell window still appears? If 0.8.17 was a typo for 0.8.170, please say so.— Rames
miguel-heygen commentedon Oct 24, 2026
Following up on the question above: the latest release is now 0.8.193. When you have a moment, could you run
from the same background shell and tell us the version printed and whether the
chrome-headless-shellconsole window still appears? If it does, the output oftasklist /v /fi "imagename eq chrome-headless-shell.exe"while the render is running would help.On your side note: the telemetry sender is now started with
windowsHide: trueon current releases, so that one should no longer open a window.jrusso1020 commentedon Oct 30, 2026
Fixed in #6613, released in 0.8.211. Please reopen if chrome-headless-shell still opens a console window on the latest release.