Releases: moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt
Moonlight PC v6.0.1
Download links:
- Windows Installer (Universal)
- Windows Portable x64, x86, or ARM64 (for work/public PCs without the ability to install new programs)
- macOS (Universal)
- Snap (for Ubuntu-based Linux distros)
- Flatpak (for other Linux distros)
- AppImage (Linux, no installation required)
- Raspberry Pi 4 and 5
- Generic ARM 32-bit and 64-bit Debian packages (not for Raspberry Pi)
- Experimental RISC-V Debian packages
- NVIDIA Jetson and Nintendo Switch (Ubuntu L4T)
- Steam Link device
The Windows installer package may require an Internet connection to download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime if your PC does not already have it installed. If you do not have Internet access during installation, you can pre-install the runtime from Microsoft's website or use the portable version.
To update an existing installation, simply run the latest installer (for Windows) or replace the old app in your Applications folder (for Mac). For the portable Windows version, extract the latest version on top of your old folder.
To install on Steam Link hardware, extract the ZIP file to the root of a FAT32 flash drive, insert it into your Steam Link, then restart the Steam Link. Moonlight can run alongside official Steam Link streaming and other Steam Link apps.
End of Support Notices:
- Windows: v6.0.x will be the final release series supporting OSes older than Windows 10 1809 and Windows Server 2019
- Windows: v6.0.x will be the final release series supporting 32-bit versions of Windows
- macOS: v6.0.x will be the final release series supporting macOS verisons older than Big Sur
New Features:
- Improved streaming performance and latency on Intel GPUs
- HDR->SDR tonemapping is now supported by the Vulkan renderer on Linux
Behavior Changes:
- Old DX9/DX10 GPUs will use the DirectX 9 renderer instead of DirectX 11 to avoid compatibility issues with old GPU drivers
- Full-screen mode on macOS will now draw under the display notch again like in versions of Moonlight prior to v6.0.0
- More time is now provided for PCs to wake up before displaying an error when starting a stream from the CLI
- Moonlight will no longer try to guess VA driver names when running libva 2.20 or later
- CUDA decoding is disabled on AppImage builds to address crashes
Bugfixes:
- Fixed crash when the Vulkan renderer executed on a system with no Vulkan devices
- Fixed video rendering failure after the window is resized when using software decoding on Windows
- Fixed video flicker on some embedded devices
- Fixed delayed display of the first frame of video on some embedded devices
- Fixed plane selection logic to avoid picking a plane with a zpos below the primary plane
- Fixed colorspace selection to take into account available values for the COLOR_ENCODING plane property
- Fixed excessive log output while streaming on Raspberry Pi
- Updated community-contributed translations from Weblate
Known Issues:
- New in 6.0.x: Unexpected tearing artifacts may occur when streaming on systems with very old Intel GPUs (Intel HD 4000 and earlier). Use v5.0.1 on these systems if you are impacted by this bug.
- Location Services on macOS may cause periodic lag and stuttering on Wi-Fi due to background network scans. To avoid the issue, disable Location Services on your Mac by going to "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Location Services"
Moonlight PC v6.0.0
Download links:
- Windows Installer (Universal)
- Windows Portable x64, x86, or ARM64 (for work/public PCs without the ability to install new programs)
- macOS (Universal)
- Snap (for Ubuntu-based Linux distros)
- Flatpak (for other Linux distros)
- AppImage (Linux, no installation required)
- Raspberry Pi 4 and 5
- Generic ARM 32-bit and 64-bit Debian packages (not for Raspberry Pi)
- Experimental RISC-V Debian packages
- NVIDIA Jetson and Nintendo Switch (Ubuntu L4T)
- Steam Link device
The Windows installer package may require an Internet connection to download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime if your PC does not already have it installed. If you do not have Internet access during installation, you can pre-install the runtime from Microsoft's website or use the portable version.
To update an existing installation, simply run the latest installer (for Windows) or replace the old app in your Applications folder (for Mac). For the portable Windows version, extract the latest version on top of your old folder.
To install on Steam Link hardware, extract the ZIP file to the root of a FAT32 flash drive, insert it into your Steam Link, then restart the Steam Link. Moonlight can run alongside official Steam Link streaming and other Steam Link apps.
End of Support Notices:
- Windows: v6.0.x will be the final release series supporting OSes older than Windows 10 1809 and Windows Server 2019
- Windows: v6.0.x will be the final release series supporting 32-bit versions of Windows
- macOS: v6.0.x will be the final release series supporting macOS verisons older than Big Sur
New Features:
- HDR is now supported on Steam Deck and other HDR-capable Linux systems using a new Vulkan-based renderer
- By default, the new Vulkan renderer is only used for HDR streaming, but it can be used all the time by setting the
PREFER_VULKAN=1
environment variable
- By default, the new Vulkan renderer is only used for HDR streaming, but it can be used all the time by setting the
- Vulkan Video decoding of H.264, HEVC, and AV1 is now supported using the new Vulkan renderer on Linux
- A new Metal-based renderer is now used on most macOS systems for increased streaming performance and reduced latency
- Both notched and notch-free native resolution options are now provided on Apple Silicon Macs
- Full E2E stream encryption is now supported when streaming from Sunshine v0.22 or later
- Initiating a stream via the command-line will now automatically wake the target machine if it is sleeping
- Error codes are now displayed in the connection termination dialog
- Detailed PC state information is now available via the new "View Details" context menu option (similar to the Android client)
- The performance overlay can now be configured to appear by default when starting a stream
Behavior Changes:
- The selected bitrate is no longer silently adjusted by Moonlight based upon the video codec or HDR mode
- You may need to adjust your bitrate setting slightly to get the same effective bitrate as prior Moonlight versions
- The selected mouse mode when starting a stream no longer influences the acceleration curve when the mouse mode is toggled using the Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M key combo while streaming
- The compatibility block on Nvidia Optimus has been lifted, so Moonlight will now run on the discrete GPU if configured to in Nvidia Control Panel
- Game Mode is disabled due to various reports of macOS Sonoma bugs affecting Moonlight and limited performance benefit (#1170 and #1297)
- The D3D11 renderer is now preferred over D3D9 for all streaming scenarios on Windows 10 or later
- Per-session keys (rikey and rikeyid values) are now automatically stripped from logs
- Log messages on Linux will now be logged to stderr rather than stdout
- Log messages on Windows will print to stderr instead of a separate log file if stderr has been redirected
- Hardcoded fallback paths for VAAPI and VDPAU drivers are now only used by the AppImage package
- EGL is now always used instead of GLX for loading OpenGL in X11 environments on non-x86 platforms for improved compatibility with some embedded devices
Platform Support Improvements:
- Linux4Tegra packages are now provided for Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04
- Debian Bookworm and Ubuntu Jammy/Noble packages are now built with Wayland support
- The
CONFIG+=vulkanslow
qmake option is now provided for embedded systems with a slow Vulkan implementation to prefer hardware YUV-RGB conversion and scaling rather than using Vulkan - For systems where GPU scaling and color conversion is slow regardless of which API is used,
CONFIG+=gpuslow
is equivalent toCONFIG+=vulkanslow CONFIG+=glslow
Bugfixes:
- Improved reliability of streaming during momentary drops of WiFi connections
- Improved performance with high polling rate mice
- Improved input latency when a gamepad is connected
- Improved detection of VPNs when streaming
- Added missing command-line options to control HDR and AV1 codec usage
- Added dri-nonfree and dri-freeworld paths to the AppImage's VAAPI driver path list for Fedora 40
- Fixed failure to launch from outside a desktop environment on Raspberry Pi 5 devices
- Fixed instant connection termination error when streaming over the Internet behind certain Carrier-Grade NAT devices
- Fixed several bugs with full-screen mode on macOS
- Fixed incorrect MTU detection when streaming over the Internet without a VPN
- Fixed recovery of audio when no audio output device is present when the stream starts
- Fixed inability to redirect stdout and stderr when launching from the command line on Windows
- Fixed compatibility with Rockchip MPP FFmpeg decoder
- Fixed handling incompatible SDL_VIDEODRIVER settings when using EGLFS or LinuxFB Qt platform backends
- Fixed merging of gamepad state when multi-controller mode is disabled
- Fixed indefinitely resending mDNS queries when a host could not be resolved
- Fixed Steam Controller detection on Steam Link
- Fixed inability to pair when the host is not using a RSA-2048 key
- Updated included gamepad mappings
- Updated community-contributed translations from Weblate
Dependency Updates:
- Updated Windows installer to WiX v5
- Updated to libva 2.21 in AppImage builds
- Updated SDL2
- Updated to FFmpeg 7.0.1
- Updated to dav1d 1.4.2
- Updated to SDL2-ttf 2.22.0
- Updated to Qt 6.7.1 for Windows ARM64 builds
Known Issues:
- NEW: Video latency may be higher than expected on some older Intel integrated GPUs (#1304)
- Location Services on macOS may cause periodic lag and stuttering on Wi-Fi due to background network scans. To avoid the issue, disable Location Services on your Mac by going to "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Location Services"
Moonlight PC v5.0.1
Download links:
- Windows Installer (Universal)
- Windows Portable x64, x86, or ARM64 (for work/public PCs without the ability to install new programs)
- macOS (Universal)
- Snap (for Ubuntu-based Linux distros)
- Flatpak (for other Linux distros)
- AppImage (Linux, no installation required)
- Raspberry Pi 4
- Generic ARM packages (not for Raspberry Pi)
- Experimental RISC-V packages
- NVIDIA Jetson and Nintendo Switch (Ubuntu L4T)
- Steam Link device
The Windows installer package may require an Internet connection to download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime if your PC does not already have it installed. If you do not have Internet access during installation, you can pre-install the runtime from Microsoft's website or use the portable version.
To update an existing installation, simply run the latest installer (for Windows) or replace the old app in your Applications folder (for Mac). For the portable Windows version, extract the latest version on top of your old folder.
To install on Steam Link hardware, extract the ZIP file to the root of a FAT32 flash drive, insert it into your Steam Link, then restart the Steam Link. To do a full restart, unplug and reinsert the power cable from the Steam Link. Moonlight can run alongside official Steam Link streaming and other Steam Link apps.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed connection issue streaming from some hosts running GeForce Experience or Sunshine v0.20 and earlier
- Fixed failure to launch on macOS Big Sur and earlier
- Fixed dark mode not changing the titlebar theme on Windows ARM64
- Fixed incorrect detection of libva-drm library on Linux
- Fixed PS4/PS5 controller features not working on Raspberry Pi OS
- Updated community-contributed translations from Weblate
Known Issues:
- Location Services on macOS may cause periodic lag and stuttering on Wi-Fi due to background network scans. To avoid the issue, disable Location Services on your Mac by going to "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Location Services"
Moonlight PC v5.0.0
Download links:
- Windows Installer (Universal)
- Windows Portable x64, x86, or ARM64 (for work/public PCs without the ability to install new programs)
- macOS (Universal)
- Snap (for Ubuntu-based Linux distros)
- Flatpak (for other Linux distros)
- AppImage (Linux, no installation required)
- Raspberry Pi 4
- Generic ARM packages (not for Raspberry Pi)
- Experimental RISC-V packages
- NVIDIA Jetson and Nintendo Switch (Ubuntu L4T)
- Steam Link device
The Windows installer package may require an Internet connection to download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime if your PC does not already have it installed. If you do not have Internet access during installation, you can pre-install the runtime from Microsoft's website or use the portable version.
To update an existing installation, simply run the latest installer (for Windows) or replace the old app in your Applications folder (for Mac). For the portable Windows version, extract the latest version on top of your old folder.
To install on Steam Link hardware, extract the ZIP file to the root of a FAT32 flash drive, insert it into your Steam Link, then restart the Steam Link. Moonlight can run alongside official Steam Link streaming and other Steam Link apps.
New Features:
- Custom FPS values
- Streaming using the AV1 codec from Sunshine hosts
- Horizontal scrolling with Sunshine hosts
- Native multi-touch input with Sunshine hosts*
- Controller type information is passed to Sunshine for controller type autoselection*
- Extended features of PS4/PS5 controllers (touchpad, battery state, gyro/accelerometer motion, and RGB LED) are natively passed to Sunshine hosts*
- Support for up to 16 gamepads with Sunshine hosts
- Frame pacing support on Wayland
- Host-side processing latency is now displayed in the performance overlay with Sunshine hosts
- Window title now includes the PC name when streaming
- Alphabetical sorting of the PC list
- Dynamic decoder detection for improved support of custom FFmpeg builds
- Updated Play and Stop button design to improve contrast with app box art
- Older log files are automatically cleaned up
- The settings page automatically scrolls to the selected element when using keyboard or gamepad navigation
- Pressing Share+PS buttons on PS4/PS5 controllers can be used to emulate a clickpad press
- Improved audio quality when streaming with a high bitrate from remote hosts
- Increased mouse polling rate
Items above marked with * require Sunshine v0.21 or later and may not all be implemented across all supported Sunshine platforms yet.
Platform Support Improvements:
- Generic Debian packages (armhf/aarch64) are now available for ARM-based single-board computers that provide standard V4L2 H.264/HEVC decoders
- Experimental Debian Sid packages are now available for RISC-V platforms, such as the VisionFive 2 with the Wave5 V4L2 driver loaded
- Embedded systems with poor OpenGL performance can use the new
CONFIG+=glslow
qmake option to prefer performing YUV->RGB and scaling in dedicated hardware rather than OpenGL on the GPU - Unwanted library dependencies may now be disabled at compile-time using
CONFIG+=disable-<FEATURE>
options (such asCONFIG+=disable-wayland
,CONFIG+=disable-libvdpau
, etc.)
Behavior Changes:
- IPv6 addresses must be provided in URL-escaped form. Example:
[2001:db8::1234:5678]
or[2001:db8::1234:5678]:47989
- D3D11VA is used by default on multi-GPU systems and full-screen exclusive mode when V-Sync is off
- Default bitrate logic has been adjusted to behave better with custom resolutions and frame rates
- Due to the update to Qt 6.5, the Windows ARM64 build has a slightly different theme than other builds
Bugfixes:
- Reduced the frequency of audio underruns (clicks and pops) by increasing audio buffer size
- Fixed "Quitting App" message never dismissing in some cases
- Fixed parsing IPv6 literals with port numbers
- Fixed unnecessary WiFi activity causing stream disruptions
- Fixed paired hosts being forgotten if Moonlight terminates while writing hosts to disk
- Fixed freeze when closing the stream on Windows with some software that uses DX11 hooks
- Fixed freeze when closing the stream on macOS when streaming in fullscreen mode on Apple Silicon Macs
- Fixed HDR with external displays on macOS Sonoma
- Fixed washed out HDR video on the Raspberry Pi 4
- Fixed KMSDRM renderer on devices that only have NV12 primary planes
- Fixed incorrect colors using the KMSDRM renderer on devices that don't support the Rec.601 COLOR_ENCODING value
- Fixed delayed PC wake when activating Wake-On-LAN feature
- Fixed Wake-on-LAN when Sunshine is running on alternate ports
- Fixed leak of /dev/dri fds when trying to initialize VAAPI decoder
- Fixed support for the Applications/Menu key
- Fixed automatic language detection for Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese
- Fixed streaming from Sunshine when the client PC has multiple network interfaces or IPv6 privacy extensions enabled
- Fixed rare random disconnections with some wireless adapters on Windows
- Fixed small receive buffer causing video packet loss on some systems
- Fixed theme overrides causing the UI to be unusable on some systems
- Fixed tearing with V-Sync enabled on macOS and Linux when using the SDL renderer (software decoding and some hardware decoders)
- Fixed stateful V4L2 hardware decoding using h264_v4l2m2m and hevc_v4l2m2m decoders
- Fixed poor performance in AppImage builds due to lack of working EGL support
- Fixed automatic VA driver selection with libva 2.20
- Fixed build error with Musl C library
- Fixed CVE-2023-42801
- Updated included gamepad mappings
- Updated community-contributed translations from Weblate
Dependency Updates:
- Updated AppImage to Ubuntu 20.04 base
- Updated AppImage to libva 2.20 for improved VAAPI driver compatibility
- Updated Windows installer to WiX v4
- Updated SDL2
- Updated to OpenSSL 1.1.1w (Windows and macOS)
- Updated to FFmpeg 6.0
- Updated to SDL2-ttf 2.20.2
- Updated to Qt 6.5.3 for Windows ARM64 builds
- Updated to Qt 6.4.3 for macOS builds
Known Issues:
- NEW: v5.0.0 fails to launch on macOS versions prior to Monterey. Users that cannot update to more recent versions of macOS should remain on v4.3.1 until a fix is released.
- Location Services on macOS may cause periodic lag and stuttering on Wi-Fi due to background network scans. To avoid the issue, disable Location Services on your Mac by going to "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Location Services"
Moonlight PC v4.3.1
Download links:
- Windows Installer (Universal)
- Windows Portable x64, x86, or ARM64 (for work/public PCs without the ability to install new programs)
- macOS (Universal)
- Snap (for Ubuntu-based Linux distros)
- Flatpak (for other Linux distros)
- AppImage (Linux, no installation required, not recommended on Wayland)
- Raspberry Pi 4
- NVIDIA Jetson and Nintendo Switch (Ubuntu L4T)
- Steam Link device
The Windows installer package may require an Internet connection to download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime if your PC does not already have it installed. If you do not have Internet access during installation, you can pre-install the runtime from Microsoft's website or use the portable version.
To update an existing installation, simply run the latest installer (for Windows) or replace the old app in your Applications folder (for Mac). For the portable Windows version, extract the latest version on top of your old folder.
To install on Steam Link hardware, extract the ZIP file to the root of a FAT32 flash drive, insert it into your Steam Link, then restart the Steam Link. Moonlight can run alongside official Steam Link streaming and other Steam Link apps.
This is a bugfix release primarily to address a crash which could happen during periods of network instability on the prior v4.3.0 release.
New Features and Improvements:
- Windowed mode streaming now starts maximized if the GUI window was maximized
- Improved performance when streaming on a local network using IPv6
- Logs on Windows and macOS are now limited by size instead of line count
Bugfixes:
- Fixed crash during specific patterns of audio packet loss
- Windows logs now use CRLF line endings for improved compatibility with text editors
- Updated community-contributed translations
Known Issues:
- Location Services on macOS may cause periodic lag and stuttering on Wi-Fi due to background network scans. To avoid the issue, disable Location Services on your Mac by going to "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Location Services"
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video does not move in sync with the window when dragged. This is a limitation of MMAL video overlays.
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video will not display while the app does not have focus. This is required to prevent Moonlight's video overlay from rendering on top of other apps.
Moonlight PC v4.3.0
Download links:
- Windows Installer (Universal)
- Windows Portable x64, x86, or ARM64 (for work/public PCs without the ability to install new programs)
- macOS (Universal)
- Snap (for Ubuntu-based Linux distros)
- Flatpak (for other Linux distros)
- AppImage (Linux, no installation required, not recommended on Wayland)
- Raspberry Pi 4
- NVIDIA Jetson and Nintendo Switch (Ubuntu L4T)
- Steam Link device
The Windows installer package may require an Internet connection to download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime if your PC does not already have it installed. If you do not have Internet access during installation, you can pre-install the runtime from Microsoft's website or use the portable version.
To update an existing installation, simply run the latest installer (for Windows) or replace the old app in your Applications folder (for Mac). For the portable Windows version, extract the latest version on top of your old folder.
To install on Steam Link hardware, extract the ZIP file to the root of a FAT32 flash drive, insert it into your Steam Link, then restart the Steam Link. Moonlight can run alongside official Steam Link streaming and other Steam Link apps.
New Features and Improvements:
- Improved support for GeForce Experience 3.26
- Improved image quality and performance when recovering from video packet loss using HEVC
- Improved glitch concealment after audio packet loss
- Improved UI performance when paired with many hosts or hosts with large numbers of apps
- Pairing with Sunshine hosts is now possible even if the host is currently in a streaming session
- Title bar color now follows system-wide dark mode on Windows
Bugfixes:
- Fixed streaming at resolutions below 720x480 with GeForce Experience 3.26
- Fixed green line at the screen edge when streaming at certain resolutions on some Windows systems
- Fixed window position and size being lost when toggling between full-screen and windowed mode
- Fixed initial window size not always respecting the stream aspect ratio
- Fixed unexpected error when streaming at resolutions above 4096x4096 using Sunshine
- Updated included gamepad mappings
- Updated community-contributed translations
Known Issues:
- Location Services on macOS may cause periodic lag and stuttering on Wi-Fi due to background network scans. To avoid the issue, disable Location Services on your Mac by going to "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Location Services"
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video does not move in sync with the window when dragged. This is a limitation of MMAL video overlays.
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video will not display while the app does not have focus. This is required to prevent Moonlight's video overlay from rendering on top of other apps.
Moonlight PC v4.2.1
Download links:
- Windows Installer (Universal)
- Windows Portable x64, x86, or ARM64 (for work/public PCs without the ability to install new programs)
- macOS (Universal)
- Snap (for Ubuntu-based Linux distros)
- Flatpak (for other Linux distros)
- AppImage (Linux, no installation required, not recommended on Wayland)
- Raspberry Pi 4
- NVIDIA Jetson and Nintendo Switch (Ubuntu L4T)
- Steam Link device
The Windows installer package may require an Internet connection to download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime if your PC does not already have it installed. If you do not have Internet access during installation, you can pre-install the runtime from Microsoft's website or use the portable version.
To update an existing installation, simply run the latest installer (for Windows) or replace the old app in your Applications folder (for Mac). For the portable Windows version, extract the latest version on top of your old folder.
To install on Steam Link hardware, extract the ZIP file to the root of a FAT32 flash drive, insert it into your Steam Link, then restart the Steam Link. Moonlight can run alongside official Steam Link streaming and other Steam Link apps.
v4.2.1 is a hotfix release to address a bug in v4.2.0 that prevented streaming from hosts running Sunshine. The original release notes for v4.2.0 are below.
New Features:
- Added support for pairing via the command-line
- Added support for listing installed apps on a host via the command-line
- Improved support for NVIDIA SHIELD and Nintendo game controllers
- Improved handling of V-Sync on Wayland systems to reduce latency
- Improved performance using the legacy non-EGL VAAPI rendering code
Behavior Changes:
- Moonlight now uses D3D11VA decoding by default when streaming in windowed or borderless windowed mode on Windows 10 or later with WDDM 2.0+ drivers
- D3D11VA allows V-Sync to be fully disabled in borderless windowed mode (and even regular windowed mode on GPUs that support Multi-Plane Overlays)
- On GPUs with Multi-Plane Overlay support, D3D11VA can provide display latency in windowed mode that is as low as in traditional full-screen mode
Bugfixes:
- Fixed excessive flickering when transitioning from full-screen to windowed mode on Windows
- Fixed streaming window positioning on multi-display macOS systems
- Fixed sporadic crash on macOS while streaming or closing the stream
- Fixed native resolution detection on high DPI Wayland systems
- Fixed audio crackling with SDL 2.24.0 on systems using PulseAudio
- Updated included gamepad mappings
- Updated community-contributed translations
Known Issues:
- Location Services on macOS may cause periodic lag and stuttering on Wi-Fi due to background network scans. To avoid the issue, disable Location Services on your Mac by going to "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Location Services"
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video does not move in sync with the window when dragged. This is a limitation of MMAL video overlays.
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video will not display while the app does not have focus. This is required to prevent Moonlight's video overlay from rendering on top of other apps.
Moonlight PC v4.2.0
Download links:
- Windows Installer (Universal)
- Windows Portable x64, x86, or ARM64 (for work/public PCs without the ability to install new programs)
- macOS (Universal)
- Snap (for Ubuntu-based Linux distros)
- Flatpak (for other Linux distros)
- AppImage (Linux, no installation required, not recommended on Wayland)
- Raspberry Pi 4
- NVIDIA Jetson and Nintendo Switch (Ubuntu L4T)
- Steam Link device
The Windows installer package may require an Internet connection to download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime if your PC does not already have it installed. If you do not have Internet access during installation, you can pre-install the runtime from Microsoft's website or use the portable version.
To update an existing installation, simply run the latest installer (for Windows) or replace the old app in your Applications folder (for Mac). For the portable Windows version, extract the latest version on top of your old folder.
To install on Steam Link hardware, extract the ZIP file to the root of a FAT32 flash drive, insert it into your Steam Link, then restart the Steam Link. Moonlight can run alongside official Steam Link streaming and other Steam Link apps.
New Features:
- Added support for pairing via the command-line
- Added support for listing installed apps on a host via the command-line
- Improved support for NVIDIA SHIELD and Nintendo game controllers
- Improved handling of V-Sync on Wayland systems to reduce latency
- Improved performance using the legacy non-EGL VAAPI rendering code
Behavior Changes:
- Moonlight now uses D3D11VA decoding by default when streaming in windowed or borderless windowed mode on Windows 10 or later with WDDM 2.0+ drivers
- D3D11VA allows V-Sync to be fully disabled in borderless windowed mode (and even regular windowed mode on GPUs that support Multi-Plane Overlays)
- On GPUs with Multi-Plane Overlay support, D3D11VA can provide display latency in windowed mode that is as low as in traditional full-screen mode
Bugfixes:
- Fixed excessive flickering when transitioning from full-screen to windowed mode on Windows
- Fixed streaming window positioning on multi-display macOS systems
- Fixed sporadic crash on macOS while streaming or closing the stream
- Fixed native resolution detection on high DPI Wayland systems
- Fixed audio crackling with SDL 2.24.0 on systems using PulseAudio
- Updated included gamepad mappings
- Updated community-contributed translations
Known Issues:
- Location Services on macOS may cause periodic lag and stuttering on Wi-Fi due to background network scans. To avoid the issue, disable Location Services on your Mac by going to "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Location Services"
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video does not move in sync with the window when dragged. This is a limitation of MMAL video overlays.
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video will not display while the app does not have focus. This is required to prevent Moonlight's video overlay from rendering on top of other apps.
Moonlight PC v4.1.0
Download links:
- Windows Installer (Universal)
- Windows Portable x64, x86, or ARM64 (for work/public PCs without the ability to install new programs)
- macOS (Universal)
- Snap (for Ubuntu-based Linux distros)
- Flatpak (for other Linux distros)
- AppImage (Linux, no installation required, not recommended on Wayland)
- Raspberry Pi 4
- NVIDIA Jetson and Nintendo Switch (Ubuntu L4T)
- Steam Link device
The Windows installer package may require an Internet connection to download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime if your PC does not already have it installed. If you do not have Internet access during installation, you can pre-install the runtime from Microsoft's website or use the portable version.
To update an existing installation, simply run the latest installer (for Windows) or replace the old app in your Applications folder (for Mac). For the portable Windows version, extract the latest version on top of your old folder.
To install on Steam Link hardware, extract the ZIP file to the root of a FAT32 flash drive, insert it into your Steam Link, then restart the Steam Link. Moonlight can run alongside official Steam Link streaming and other Steam Link apps.
New Features:
- Cursor lock can now be disabled when in full-screen mode
- Overlays are now supported on the non-EGL X11 VAAPI renderer (requires RGBA subpicture support in the VAAPI driver)
- Connection status warnings are now supported on Steam Link
Behavior Changes:
- Moonlight can now reduce the client display resolution in full-screen mode if the current display mode doesn't have a high enough refresh rate for the selected stream frame rate
- When choosing a new client display resolution in full-screen mode, Moonlight will pick a display mode with the closest aspect ratio to the selected stream resolution
- Moonlight will now try using non-default GPUs on Windows if the default GPU doesn't support the specified video codec
- Moonlight now defaults to borderless windowed mode on Wayland systems
- Moonlight uses D3D11VA decoding by default on Windows ARM64 for improved performance at higher resolutions
Bugfixes:
- Improved 4K HDR streaming performance on Windows
- Improved streaming performance in borderless windowed mode on Windows
- Fixed Moonlight's full-screen window being stuck on top after Alt+Tab on Windows
- Fixed excessive scrolling acceleration on macOS
- Fixed missing toolbar buttons in certain languages
- Fixed some text on the settings page not updating when the language is changed
- Fixed a frame pacing bug that could cause excessive frame drops
- Fixed the "keep display awake" setting not being saved when Moonlight restarts
- Fixed black screen after unmaximizing the Moonlight window on some Linux systems
- Fixed broken video stream scaling on the Raspberry Pi when streaming H.264 in full-screen
- Fixed broken display mode switching on the Raspberry Pi when streaming H.264 in full-screen
- Fixed renderer selection logic on the Raspberry Pi that could lead to poor performance when rpivid-v4l2 is enabled
- Updated included gamepad mappings
- Updated community-contributed translations
Known Issues:
- Location Services on macOS may cause periodic lag and stuttering on Wi-Fi due to background network scans. To avoid the issue, disable Location Services on your Mac by going to "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Location Services"
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video does not move in sync with the window when dragged. This is a limitation of MMAL video overlays.
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video will not display while the app does not have focus. This is required to prevent Moonlight's video overlay from rendering on top of other apps.
Moonlight PC v4.0.0
Download links:
- Windows Installer (Universal)
- Windows Portable x64, x86, or ARM64 (for work/public PCs without the ability to install new programs)
- macOS (Universal)
- Snap (for Ubuntu-based Linux distros)
- Flatpak (for other Linux distros)
- AppImage (Linux, no installation required, not recommended on Wayland)
- Raspberry Pi 4
- NVIDIA Jetson and Nintendo Switch (Ubuntu L4T)
- Steam Link device
The Windows installer package may require an Internet connection to download the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime if your PC does not already have it installed. If you do not have Internet access during installation, you can pre-install the runtime from Microsoft's website or use the portable version.
To update an existing installation, simply run the latest installer (for Windows) or replace the old app in your Applications folder (for Mac). For the portable Windows version, extract the latest version on top of your old folder.
To install on Steam Link hardware, extract the ZIP file to the root of a FAT32 flash drive, insert it into your Steam Link, then restart the Steam Link. Moonlight can run alongside official Steam Link streaming and other Steam Link apps.
New features:
- Added experimental support for HDR streaming on Windows 10 & 11, Linux, and Raspberry Pi 4 (macOS was already supported)
- See this link for details on system requirements for HDR
- Added a new key combo for locking the mouse cursor to the window (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L)
- Added an option to avoid keeping the client display awake while streaming
- Switched to a new decoder implementation on Linux4Tegra (L4T) platforms to improve streaming performance and compatibility with newer JetPack versions
Behavior Changes:
- HDR streaming is now a separate option rather than being part of the Video Codec override dropdown
- HDR streaming is no longer restricted to apps that are certified by NVIDIA as compatible with GameStream HDR
- Some newer games may require an HDR display or HDR10-compatible EDID emulator dongle connected to your host PC for HDR options to be available
Bugfixes:
- Added workaround for incorrect colorspace on AMD GPUs running recent display drivers
- Fixed higher than expected CPU usage on some older Intel Macs
- Fixed loss of all audio if the active audio device is unplugged while streaming
- Fixed duplicated controllers on some third-party Xbox 360 wireless adapters
- Fixed the GUI being unresponsive after manually quitting when connection to the host is lost
- Fixed the minimize key combo on Windows when streaming in fullscreen mode
- Fixed a rare crash if a controller disconnects right as rumble is starting
- Fixed text rendering on the overlay UI when using SDL_ttf 2.0.18 on Linux
- Fixed incorrect colorspace when using HEVC on Raspberry Pi
- Updated AppImage with libva 2.14
- Updated included gamepad mappings
- Updated community-contributed translations
Known Issues:
- New in v4.0.0 #766: Alt+Tab may not work properly on Windows when streaming in fullscreen or borderless windowed modes. You can use the Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D shortcut as a workaround until a fix is released.
- Location Services on macOS may cause periodic lag and stuttering on Wi-Fi due to background network scans. To avoid the issue, disable Location Services on your Mac by going to "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Location Services"
- Surface Pro X devices (and possibly other ARM devices) must be upgraded to Windows 10 2004 or later to avoid a video glitch.
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video does not move in sync with the window when dragged. This is a limitation of MMAL video overlays.
- In windowed mode on the Raspberry Pi, video will not display while the app does not have focus. This is required to prevent Moonlight's video overlay from rendering on top of other apps.