Python console Fullscreen? Maybe using os.system?

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to get my program to open in a fullscreen console window.

Is there any command that you can type within the command prompt to toggle fullscreen?

If so I'd imagine the code going something like:

from os import system

system("toggle.fullscreen")

{CODE HERE}

I understand mode con can be used, but that doesn't actually toggle it being maximized, which would be much more useful for me, thanks!

Answer 1

Here's a function to maximize the current console window. It uses ctypes to call WinAPI functions. First it calls GetLargestConsoleWindowSize in order to figure how big it can make the window, with the option to specify a number of lines that exceeds this in order to get a scrollback buffer. To do the work of resizing the screen buffer it simply calls mode.com via subprocess.check_call. Finally, it gets the console window handle via GetConsoleWindow and calls ShowWindow to maximize it.

import os
import ctypes
import msvcrt
import subprocess

from ctypes import wintypes

kernel32 = ctypes.WinDLL('kernel32', use_last_error=True)
user32 = ctypes.WinDLL('user32', use_last_error=True)

SW_MAXIMIZE = 3

kernel32.GetConsoleWindow.restype = wintypes.HWND
kernel32.GetLargestConsoleWindowSize.restype = wintypes._COORD
kernel32.GetLargestConsoleWindowSize.argtypes = (wintypes.HANDLE,)
user32.ShowWindow.argtypes = (wintypes.HWND, ctypes.c_int)

def maximize_console(lines=None):
    fd = os.open('CONOUT$', os.O_RDWR)
    try:
        hCon = msvcrt.get_osfhandle(fd)
        max_size = kernel32.GetLargestConsoleWindowSize(hCon)
        if max_size.X == 0 and max_size.Y == 0:
            raise ctypes.WinError(ctypes.get_last_error())
    finally:
        os.close(fd)
    cols = max_size.X
    hWnd = kernel32.GetConsoleWindow()
    if cols and hWnd:
        if lines is None:
            lines = max_size.Y
        else:
            lines = max(min(lines, 9999), max_size.Y)
        subprocess.check_call('mode.com con cols={} lines={}'.format(
                                cols, lines))
        user32.ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_MAXIMIZE)