How do I kill all instances of a certain browser?

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I'm making a program that when it's in enabled mode, then the user is watching adult content or something he wants to hide from others, so if a kid enters the home and he isn't supposed to see what's on the screen, when the adult pressed "RightCtrl" a browser he uses for this only gets terminated instantly, all of its instances (multiple windows and multiple tabs), the user enters the name of the process of the browser or chooses as I put a combobox and he chooses the name of the browser from a list of browsers, and I would find the name of the process and enter it in my program, but I want to kill *all* the instances of that browser immediately, what does "kill process tree" mean and can it be useful here plz?

How do you recommend I see the exact names of the process of the browser? start them one by one and check task manager plz?

What I have tried:

C#

try
{Process[] workers = Process.GetProcessesByName("nameOfBrowserHere")
foreach (Process worker in workers)
{
     worker.Kill();
     worker.WaitForExit();
     worker.Dispose();
}
}
catch {}

Maybe this is better:

C#

foreach(Process p in Process.GetProcessesByName("nameOfBrowserHere")) p.Kill();

Posted 4-May-22 4:28am

FierceLion

Updated 5-May-22 2:14am

Sean Ewington

v4

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Richard MacCutchan 4-May-22 10:52am

Or the adult can stop behaving like a child. Or even (shock horror) click the X in the top right corner.

FierceLion 4-May-22 10:54am

It's a program I want to make for everyone, also with the ability to type any process name maybe for other programs, it's easy to make and useful to be around and I enjoy programming useful stuf, I'm not behaving like a child I need this for good stuff too.

Richard MacCutchan 4-May-22 10:59am

I said "the adult" behaving like a child, i.e. viewing inappropriate content. And by the time he has figured out what to type into your program the kid will have seen everything.

FierceLion 4-May-22 11:00am

The user chooses the name of the browser and whenever he hears a kid coming around the adult simply presses "RightControl" and on key down the browser would be killed!

Richard MacCutchan 4-May-22 11:03am

Do you know what happens if you press that (or any) key combination while the browser has the focus?

FierceLion 4-May-22 11:05am

No, I guess when pressing RightControl when the browser is in focus or not, only my program would kill the browser for the users, nothing more, the user can choose another key.

Richard MacCutchan 4-May-22 11:08am

If the browser has the focus, which it will if the user is viewing it, then your program will not be able to know when any particular key is pressed. I think you first need to study Windows hooks to understand some of the issues you need to solve, in order to make this work.

FierceLion 4-May-22 11:10am

My program already works on global windows keyboard hooks, it catches any press in Windows (for the current user) no matter which window is focused (maybe except task manager dunno).

Richard MacCutchan 4-May-22 11:13am

OK, so what actual problem do you need help with.

FierceLion 4-May-22 11:14am

I checked, task manager "eats" the keypress and my program doesn't detect it.

Richard MacCutchan 4-May-22 11:20am

I have only used global hooks once in the past and that did not happen in my tests.

Dave Kreskowiak 4-May-22 11:48am

You seriously think there's a market for this? :laugh:

FierceLion 4-May-22 11:54am

I'm not selling anything, I just make it and make it available if anyone wants to use it, I'm a hobbyist with lots of free time and I enjoy programming innovative stuff.

Dave Kreskowiak 5-May-22 7:09am

A "market" does not mean that you are selling something. It's more a demand for a product.

FierceLion 5-May-22 12:27pm

I just enjoyed programming it so so so much, it took me 6 straight hours I think (I expected it would be done fast but I kept adding features), and made a Windows open-source software that can be useful to others, I don't even accept donations.

FierceLion 5-May-22 12:29pm

How do I see the exact time I posted this question in? (and not only the day plz)

Dave Kreskowiak 5-May-22 13:36pm

You don't.

2 solutions

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OriginalGriff · Answer 1 · 2022-05-04T05:12:00

That's not simple, at all. The real problem is detecting the keypress "in any app" - which you would have to do in case he is watching the browser and the focus is elsewhere, and definitely have to do if he can define which app to close.
That's possible, but it requires a Global Hook - which is not easy to arrange in C#, and if you decide to do it you'd probably best backup your computer each day before you start testing your code - if you get a hook wrong, it can have catastrophic results.

And it isn't even necessary in Win 10 / Win 11: WINKEY, CTRL + D create a new empty desktop, and WINKEY, CTRL + LEFT / WINKEY, CTRL + RIGHT switches between them.
So "hiding inappropriate material" from your child or boss is available already.

But the best solution is simpler than that: don't watch inappropriate material in a location that may be overlooked.

Chris Copeland · Answer 2 · 2022-05-04T22:36:00

Solution 2

I think you've answered your own question:

How do you recommend I see the exact names of the process of the browser? start them one by one and check task manager plz?

Each browser will have an executable that will need to run on the machine at least once. For example, Google Chrome depends on a chrome.exe, which then spawns new instances of the same process for each tab. All you can do really is either install and check the shortcut paths for each browser to see what the process name will be, or just Google each browser and hopefully their websites might give you that information.

Alternatively if you're providing a UI with the application, you could have them choose the name of the process to hide, though I doubt that will be a very user-friendly experience.

Also what happened to good ol' fashioned Alt + Tab or Win + D?

Posted 4-May-22 22:36pm

Chris Copeland

Comments

FierceLion 5-May-22 8:15am

Thx, for example Chrome and Chromium and Cent browser all share the same process name "chrome", should I make a dropdown list with the number (ID) of the process? is it the same for everyone?

Dave Kreskowiak 5-May-22 13:49pm

What you see in Task Manager -> Details is the "image name", or the name of the executable that's launched.

ProcessID's are random and assigned when a process is launched. They are not the same on every machine, nor even when you launch the same process again and again on the same machine.

FierceLion 5-May-22 14:01pm

Thx, how can I kill Chrome without killing Chromium? kill Opera without killing OperaGX? they share the same process name "chrome" and "opera" respectively.

Dave Kreskowiak 5-May-22 14:02pm

You can't! There is no way for your code to determine which process is which browser since they all use the same name.

FierceLion 5-May-22 16:46pm

Are you sure or should I ask in a new question as maybe there's a way for my program to know to kill for example only Chrome and not Chromium with it?

Dave Kreskowiak 5-May-22 17:12pm

About the only thing you can do is check the Modules collection for all of the modules loaded into each process and get the path to every module that is NOT under \Windows and see if you can find the differences in the paths of the modules between browser versions.

One problem with this is your code has to run as a 64-bit process to get the modules of another 64-bit process, and has to run as a 32-bit process to get the modules of a 32-bit process.

No, you cannot mix the two. A 32-bit process cannot get at the modules information for a 64-bit process and the other way around.

FierceLion 5-May-22 11:19am

Alt+Tab and Win+D hide the browsers and videos but don't stop the playback and sound, also maybe the kid(s) comes and sits near the user on the pc and might notice the browsers.

FierceLion 5-May-22 15:03pm

Is the .exe file name (without the .exe extension and period) always the process name to kill to quit the program for installed browsers and installed video players and installed stuff? (official stuff at least?)