Preventing console window from closing on Visual Studio C/C++ Console application

Preventing console window from closing on Visual Studio C/C++ Console application

If you run without debugging (Ctrl+F5) then by default it prompts your to press return to close the window. If you want to use the debugger, you should put a breakpoint on the last line.

Right click on your project

Properties > Configuration Properties > Linker > System

Select Console (/SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE) in SubSystem option or you can just type Console in the text field!

Now try it…it should work

Preventing console window from closing on Visual Studio C/C++ Console application

Starting from Visual Studio 2017 (15.9.4) there is an option:

Tools->Options->Debugging->Automatically close the console

The corresponding fragment from the Visual Studio documentation:

Automatically close the console when debugging stops:

Tells Visual Studio to close the console at the end of a debugging session.