Moonshine 🌙

Moonshine lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight. Your keyboard, mouse, and controller inputs are sent back to the host so you can play games remotely as if you were sitting in front of it.

Features

• Isolated streaming sessions: Each stream runs in its own compositor, completely separate from your desktop environment. Your host PC can still be used for other things while you stream.
• No monitor required: Works on headless servers — no HDMI dummy plug needed.
• Hardware video encoding: H.264, H.265, and AV1 encoding using the GPU.
• HDR support: True 10-bit HDR streaming for supported games.
• Full input support: Mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, pen/stylus, and gamepad (including motion, touchpad, and haptics).
• Audio streaming: Stereo and surround sound (5.1/7.1) with low-latency Opus encoding.

Requirements

1. Linux only. Available as .deb, .rpm, Nix, AUR, and an install script for SteamOS. Tested on Arch Linux, but reported to work on other distributions too.
2. systemd. Required for launching and managing application processes. Almost all modern Linux distributions include it by default.
3. A GPU with Vulkan video encoding. NVIDIA RTX, AMD RDNA2+, or Intel Arc.
4. Moonlight v6.0.0 or higher. Compatibility with older versions or unofficial ports is not guaranteed.

Installation

Arch

The recommended method is to install through the AUR using:

yay -S moonshine-bin

After installing, follow the distro-agnostic Enable the service steps below.

Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)

Download the latest .deb from the releases page and install it:

sudo apt install ./moonshine_*.deb

After installing, follow the Enable the service steps below.

Fedora / RHEL (.rpm)

Download the latest .rpm from the releases page and install it:

sudo dnf install ./moonshine-*.rpm

The package's post-install scripts set up udev rules, kernel modules, and the moonshine group automatically. After installing, follow the Enable the service steps below.

Nix

On NixOS, use the services.moonshine module. It installs the package and handles everything in Enable the service, so skip those steps.

Moonshine and its module are in nixpkgs:

services.moonshine = {
  enable = true;
  user = "alice"; # must be declared in users.users
  # Required: the default application points at /usr/bin/steam, which doesn't exist on NixOS.
  settings.application = [
    {
      title = "Steam";
      command = [ "/run/current-system/sw/bin/steam" "steam://open/bigpicture" ];
    }
  ];
  # Opens the ports on these interfaces only; see Security below.
  # firewallInterfaces = [ "tailscale0" ];
};

See all options at search.nixos.org.

Alternative: compiling latest commit on NixOS

This repository is also a flake that builds from the latest commit. Add it to your system flake's inputs and import its module. See nix/README.md for details.

The flake module replaces the nixpkgs one, and its options are slightly different: openFirewall instead of firewallInterfaces, a uid option you may need to set if the user's uid isn't declared in your config, and the user isn't added to input for you.

The flake package (nix profile install github:hgaiser/moonshine) has only the binary, udev rules and Vulkan layer. It doesn't include the systemd unit, so on other distros use one of the native packages above.

Bazzite / Silverblue / Atomic distros

On Fedora Atomic distros, download the .rpm from the releases page and layer it:

sudo rpm-ostree install ./moonshine-*.rpm
sudo systemctl reboot

After reboot, follow the Enable the service steps below.

SteamOS

Use the installer script:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/hgaiser/moonshine/releases/latest/download/moonshine-install.sh | bash

This deploys moonshine to /opt/moonshine/ and configuration drop-ins to /etc/. The installer registers these files with SteamOS so they persist across atomic updates.

Enable the service

These steps apply to every installation method above (the service is a systemd unit).

1. Enable user lingering:

   sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER
   

   This allows Moonshine to run applications in the user's session even when the user is not logged in (when running headless).

   If your user is always logged in when you want to stream, you can skip this step.

2. Enable the service to start on boot and run immediately:

   sudo systemctl enable --now moonshine@$USER
   

3. Gamepad support when streaming headless (no active desktop session): add your user to the input group, then log out and back in (or reboot) for it to take effect:

   sudo usermod -aG input $USER
   

   Moonshine creates a virtual gamepad per streamed controller, and the streamed game must be able to read it. When streaming while a desktop session is active, your user is already granted access to input devices as the active seat, so this step is not needed there. Run moonshine healthcheck to verify — it reports an input group warning if the group is missing.

Source

The following dependencies are required to build and run:

# Build dependencies
sudo pacman -S --asdeps \
   clang \
   cmake \
   jq \
   libc++ \
   rust

# Runtime dependencies
sudo pacman -S \
   gcc-libs \
   glibc \
   libevdev \
   libxkbcommon \
   mesa \
   opus \
   wayland \
   xorg-xwayland

Then build:

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗