startDetached() will work, yes, because it's a static method. The disadvantage is that you don't have access to the QProcess object after the method is called. Another alternative is to call waitForFinished() after calling start(), which enables synchronous (blocking) use of QProcess. That way you can use a QProcess object with local scope, because there is no further event processing until the start() method returns. This approach has the disadvantage of blocking the main thread until the program called by QProcess exits. Synchronous use of QProcess is really only useful for cases where there is no event loop. I can't see any reason to use it where you have a QApplication instance.