Launch an application elevated

[mduganitz]

Hello,

Just started using this app and so far it's been great. Thanks for all your hard work on this. I saw there was a previous issue for this #116 but there was lack of response from the requester. I was looking for this feature as well. My use case is that I have 2 separate accounts that I need to use, my standard account and a separate elevated account I use for various tasks. An example would be I would like to open Windows Terminal with my standard account using Win+ and then also have another terminal window I can open with my elevated account using Ctrl+. Is this something that is possible?

Thanks again for your hard work on this!

[flyingpie]

Hey @mduganitz Thank you for reaching out, and for the kind words!

I did a quick test for this, starting new processes as admin (which itself is not hard), but I ran into a problem.

It seems we cannot touch elevated windows (i.e., moving, hiding, fetching info, etc.), when WTQ is not. Windows returns "access is denied" errors, which makes sense, as WTQ is not running as admin, and should not be allowed to touch those.

Now, you could run WTQ as admin as well, which fixes that. But that starts every WTQ-started app as admin as well, and I'm not sure if there's a convenient way to force apps to start as non-admin at that point. But more importantly, running WTQ as admin would be non-ideal of course, as it gains a lot of otherwise unnecessary permissions.

There's a somewhat-related point in the Windows Terminal FAQ

Is it possible to mix admin and non-admin tabs in a Windows Terminal window?
No, mixing administrator-level permission tabbed shells with those that do not have elevated administrator permission is not supported due to security concerns.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/faq#is-it-possible-to-mix-admin-and-non-admin-tabs-in-a-windows-terminal-window

Some points I've found that may be interesting to further investigate:

• These tests are done with UAC at the default level, which means I'm getting a fullscreen "are you okay with this?"-prompt every time I run something as admin. The behavior might be different if UAC is at a different level, I haven't tested. What level are you on?
• Starting an elevated powershell instance from a non-elevated one results in similar behavior, we get a new window, and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to stay within the same (non-elevated) window;
• Depending on what you're using the elevated shell for, would psexec or sudo be useful here?

So I'm afraid the exact functionality is going against some of Windows' security features, as much as I'd like to support it. I'd love to hear your thoughts, perhaps there's some slightly tweaked workflow that we can get to work?

[mduganitz]

Thanks for the checking on this. I kind of suspected this might be the case with the mixed security context. I only needed a Windows Terminal elevated so I figured out a work around for it by using the global summon command within Terminal. I just launch the elevated Terminal, enter my alternate credentials and use a different key binding for that admin prompt and it works. Sadly, it doesn't look as cool as WTQ, but it achieves my goal.