Turning your .NET Core 3 Worker Service into a Windows Service

Until the introduction of the Worker Service in .NET Core 3 I always used TopShelf to turn my console application into a windows service.

Let’s see how we can do this using the built-in packages…

• Start by creating a new worker project from the command line(or open Visual Studio and search for ‘worker’ in the available templates)

dotnet new worker

• Now add the following nuget package to our project:

Install-Package Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.WindowsServices

• Next we have to modify our program.cs file and add a “UseWindowsService()”.

	public static IHostBuilder CreateHostBuilder(string[] args) =>
	Host.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
	.ConfigureServices((hostContext, services) =>
	{
	services.AddHostedService<Worker>();
	}).UseWindowsService();

view raw Program.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

• That’s it!

Of course, you don’t have to believe me like that so let’s try to install our newly created windows service. This can be done through the standard Windows Service installer:

sc create ExampleService BinPath=C:\Projects\test\ExampleService\bin\Debug\netcoreapp3.1>ExampleService.exe

Now open up your services window and have a look: