Check if a process is running or not on Windows with Python

Question

I am trying to create a python script which I will later run as a service  Now I want to run a particular part of the code only when iTunes is running  I understand from some research that polling the entire command list and then searching for the application for that list is expensive    I found out that processes on UNIX-based operating systems create a lock file to notify that a program is currently running  at which point we can use os stat location of file  to check if the file exists to determine if a program is running or not   Is there a similar lock file created on Windows   If not what are the various ways in Python by which we can determine if a process is running or not   I am using python 2 7 and iTunes COM interface

User · Answer

Psutil is the best solution for this  import psutil  processes   list p name   for p in psutil process iter      print processes  count   processes count  quot  lt app name gt  exe quot    if count    1      logging info  Application started         print  Application started   else      logging info  Process is already running          print  Process is already running        sys exit 0                             Stops duplicate instance from running

User · Answer

Would you be happy with your Python command running another program to get the info   If so  I d suggest you have a look at PsList and all its options  For example  The following would tell you about any running iTunes process  PsList itunes   If you can work out how to interpret the results  this should hopefully get you going   Edit   When I m not running iTunes  I get the following   pslist v1 29 - Sysinternals PsList Copyright  C  2000-2009 Mark Russinovich Sysinternals  Process information for CLARESPC   Name                Pid Pri Thd  Hnd   Priv        CPU Time    Elapsed Time iTunesHelper       3784   8  10  229   3164     0 00 00 046     3 41 05 053   With itunes running  I get this one extra line   iTunes              928   8  24  813 106168     0 00 08 734     0 02 08 672   However  the following command prints out info only about the iTunes program itself  i e  with the -e argument   pslist -e itunes

User · Answer

Try this code  import subprocess def process exists process name       progs   str subprocess check output  tasklist        if process name in progs          return True     else          return False  And to check if the process is running  if process exists  example exe         do something

User · Answer

If you are testing application with Behave you can use pywinauto  Similar with previously comment  you can use this function   def check if app is running context  processName   try      context controller   pywinauto Application backend  uia   connect best match   processName  timeout   5      context controller top window   set focus       return True except pywinauto application ProcessNotFoundError      pass return False   backend can be  uia  or  win32   timeout if for force reconnect with the applicaction during 5 seconds

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Long Codes Are Not Necessary To Find Out Whether The App Is Running Or Not This is for those who use TK in PYTHON and For Those Who Are Beginner In Python For Tk from tkinter import   import os  root   Tk    def killer appname       a   os system f taskkill  PID   appname   exe  F       if a  1 or a  0          l1 config text appname   Has Been Killed Successfully       else          l1 config text appname  quot  Is Not Running quot    Button text  quot Kill VLC MEIDA PLAYER quot  command lambda  killer  VLC     pack   Button text  quot Kill CMD quot  command lambda  killer  CMD     pack   Button text  quot Kill Notepad quot  command lambda  killer  NOTEPAD     pack    l1   Label text  quot  quot   l1 pack    root mainloop    For Python Console a   os system  taskkill  PID cmd exe  F      Here Insted Of Cmd You Can Give Your Program Name if a  0 or a  1      print  Cmd Is Running And Is Killed   else      print  CMD is Not Running   inn   input  Press Any Key To Continue     Insted Of Cmd exe You Can Give Your Program Name Such As VLC exe  Thank You

User · Answer

import psutil  def check process status process name               Return status of process based on process name              process status     proc status   for proc in psutil process iter   if proc name      process name       if process status          print  Process name  s and staus  s   process name  process status 0        else          print  Process name not valid   process name

User · Answer

If can t rely on the process name like python scripts which will always have python exe as process name  If found this method very handy  import psutil psutil pid exists pid    check docs for further info http   psutil readthedocs io en latest  psutil pid exists

User · Answer

According to the ewerybody post  https   stackoverflow com a 29275361 7530957  Multiple problems can arise    Multiple processes with the same name Name of the long process   The  ewerybody s  code will not work if the process name is long  So there is a problem with this line   last line lower   startswith process name lower      Because last line will be shorter than the process name   So if you just want to know if a process processes is are active   from subprocess import check output  def process exists process name       call    TASKLIST     FI    imagename eq  s    process name     if check output call  splitlines   3            return True   Instead for all the information of a process processes  from subprocess import check output  def process exists process name       call    TASKLIST     FI    imagename eq  s    process name     processes          for process in check output call  splitlines   3            process   process decode           processes append process split        return processes

User · Answer

import psutil  for p in psutil process iter attrs   pid    name         if  itunes exe  in  p info  name    lower            print  yes    p info  name    lower      for python 3 7    import psutil  for p in psutil process iter attrs   pid    name         if p info  name       itunes exe           print  yes    p info  name       This works for python 3 8  amp  psutil 5 7 0  windows

User · Answer

You can not rely on lock files in Linux or Windows   I would just bite the bullet and iterate through all the running programs   I really do not believe it will be as  expensive  as you think   psutil is an excellent cross-platform python module cable of enumerating all the running programs on a system   import psutil      someProgram  in  p name   for p in psutil process iter

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import subprocess as sp for v in str sp check output  powershell  gps   where     MainWindowTitle      split           if len v  is not 0 and  -  not in v and    r    not in v and  iTunes  in v  print  Found

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win32ui FindWindow classname  None  returns a window handle if any window with the given class name is found  It raises window32ui error otherwise   import win32ui  def WindowExists classname       try          win32ui FindWindow classname  None      except win32ui error          return False     else          return True  if WindowExists  DropboxTrayIcon        print  Dropbox is running  sir   else      print  Dropbox is running      not     I found that the window class name for the Dropbox tray icon was DropboxTrayIcon using Autohotkey Window Spy   See also  MSDN FindWindow

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Although  zeller said it already here is an example how to use tasklist  As I was just looking for vanilla python alternatives     import subprocess  def process exists process name       call    TASKLIST     FI    imagename eq  s    process name       use buildin check output right away     output   subprocess check output call  decode         check in last line for process name     last line   output strip   split   r n   -1        because Fail message could be translated     return last line lower   startswith process name lower      and now you can do    gt  gt  gt  process exists  eclipse exe   True   gt  gt  gt  process exists  AJKGVSJGSCSeclipse exe   False   To avoid calling this multiple times and have an overview of all the processes this way you could do something like     get info dict about all running processes import subprocess output   subprocess check output   TASKLIST     FO    CSV    decode     get rid of extra   and split into lines output   output replace          split   r n   keys   output 0  split      proc list    i split      for i in output 1   if i    make dict with proc names as keys and dicts with the extra nfo as values proc dict   dict  i 0   dict zip keys 1    i 1      for i in proc list  for name  values in sorted proc dict items    key lambda x  x 0  lower         print   s   s     name  values

User · Answer

This works nicely  def running        n 0  number of instances of the program running      prog  line split   for line in subprocess check output  tasklist   splitlines         prog pop e  for e in  0 1 2    useless      for task in prog          if task 0    itunes exe               n n 1     if n gt 0          return True     else          return False

User · Answer

Lock files are generally not used on Windows  and rarely on Unix   Typically when a Windows program wants to see if another instance of itself is already running  it will call FindWindow with a known title or class name   def iTunesRunning        import win32ui       may need FindWindow  iTunes   None  or FindWindow None   iTunes         or something similar     if FindWindow  iTunes    iTunes            print  Found an iTunes window          return True

User · Answer

Psutil suggested by Mark  is really the best solution  its only drawback is the GPL compatible license  If that s a problem  then you can invoke Windows  process info commands  wmic process where WMI is available  XP pro  vista  win7  or tasklist  Here is a description to do it  How to call an external program in python and retrieve the output and return code   not the only possible way

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There is a python module called wmi  import wmi c wmi WMI   def check process running str        if c Win32 Process name str             print  quot Process is running quot       else          print  quot Process is not running quot              check process running  quot yourprocess exe quot

User · Answer

I d like to add this solution to the list  for historical purposes  It allows you to find out based on  exe instead of window title  and also returns memory used  amp  PID   processes   subprocess Popen  tasklist   stdin subprocess PIPE  stderr subprocess PIPE  stdout subprocess PIPE  communicate   0    Put a regex for exact matches  or a simple  in  for naive matches   A slice of example output   notepad exe                  13944 Console                    1     11 920 K python exe                    5240 Console                    1     28 616 K conhost exe                   9796 Console                    1      7 812 K svchost exe                   1052 Services                   0     18 524 K iTunes exe                    1108 Console                    1    157 764 K

[python] Check if a process is running or not on Windows with Python

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