If we have a longer running process taking place in a console application, it’s useful to be able to provide some feedback to the user so they know that the application hasn’t crashed. In a GUI application we’d use something like an animated progress bar or spinner. In a console application we can make use of the SetCursorPosition() method to keep the cursor in the same place while we output characters, to create a spinning animation.

While the code below could certainly be improved, it illustrates the point:

using System;

namespace ConsoleDemo
{
    internal class ConsoleSpinner
    {
        private int _currentAnimationFrame;

        public ConsoleSpinner()
        {
            SpinnerAnimationFrames = new[]
                                     {
                                         '|',
                                         '/',
                                         '-',
                                         '\\'
                                     };
        }

        public char[] SpinnerAnimationFrames { get; set; }

        public void UpdateProgress()
        {
            // Store the current position of the cursor
            var originalX = Console.CursorLeft;
            var originalY = Console.CursorTop;

            // Write the next frame (character) in the spinner animation
            Console.Write(SpinnerAnimationFrames[_currentAnimationFrame]);

            // Keep looping around all the animation frames
            _currentAnimationFrame++;
            if (_currentAnimationFrame == SpinnerAnimationFrames.Length)
            {
                _currentAnimationFrame = 0;
            }

            // Restore cursor to original position
            Console.SetCursorPosition(originalX, originalY);
        }
    }
}

using System;
using System.Threading;

namespace ConsoleDemo
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Press CTRL-C to exit.");

            var s = new ConsoleSpinner();

            while (true)
            {
                Thread.Sleep(100); // simulate some work being done
                s.UpdateProgress();
            }

        }
    }
}

Notice that in the animation, the cursor is still visible which looks a bit ugly. We can fix that with the CursorVisible property:

public void UpdateProgress()
       {
           // Hide cursor to improve the visuals (note: we should re-enable at some point)
           Console.CursorVisible = false;

           // Store the current position of the cursor
           var originalX = Console.CursorLeft;
           var originalY = Console.CursorTop;

           // etc.
}

Now we get something nicer looking:

If we want different animation frames we can choose our own, the example below uses some Unicode characters:

var s = new ConsoleSpinner();

s.SpinnerAnimationFrames = new[]
{
    '░',
    '▒',
    '▓'                                         
};

For more console related tips, check out my Building .NET Console Applications in C# Pluralsight course.

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