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moonlight moonlight moonlight
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Installation

There are several ways to install moonlight, depending on where you use Discord.

moonlight installer

The moonlight installer automates the installation process for you. To use it, download and run the installer, download moonlight through it, and then patch a Discord installation.

Discord installations are autodetected on your machine. Keep the installer in the event that a Discord update breaks moonlight, so you can unpatch Discord or update moonlight.

Download

Download and run moonlight-installer.exe. Close Discord fully before patching.

After you’ve installed moonlight, read about how to use moonlight:

Getting started How to use moonlight
Recovering from crashes How to fix your client if it crashes on startup
Communication channels Where to get help, and where to find announcements

moonlight-cli

A command line installer can be used to update and patch moonlight. Install Rust, then build the CLI from source:

Terminal window
cargo install --git https://github.com/moonlight-mod/moonlight-installer.git moonlight-cli
moonlight-cli install stable # or `moonlight-cli install nightly`
moonlight-cli patch /path/to/discord/executable

You can specify a custom moonlight dist directory with moonlight-cli patch -m /path/to/moonlight/dist.

Manual installations

Manual installations are suggested for those who wish to work on moonlight itself.

  • Build moonlight.
  • Go to your Discord install’s resources folder.
  • Rename the app.asar to _app.asar, and create an app folder. Discord will load the folder instead of the .asar now that it has been renamed.
  • Create the following files in resources/app:
package.json
{
  "name": "discord",
  "main": "./injector.js",
  "private": true
}
injector.js
require("/path/to/moonlight/dist/injector").inject(
  require("path").join(__dirname, "../_app.asar")
);

Adjust the /path/to/moonlight/dist to point to the dist folder in your locally cloned moonlight install.

You should have the following structure:

  • Directoryresources
    • _app.asar
    • Directoryapp
      • injector.js
      • package.json

Browser

moonlight can be installed as a browser extension. To use it, manually build moonlight, and then build the browser extension:

  • Manifest v3 (Chrome): pnpm run browser
  • Manifest v2 (Firefox): pnpm run browser-mv2

The output extension will be at dist/browser. Chrome users can check “Developer mode” and click “Load unpacked” in chrome://extensions, and Firefox users can click “Load Temporary Add-on” in about:debugging.

Nix

moonlight offers a nixpkgs package and a flake. It is suggested to use the nixpkgs package, but the flake lets you pick moonlight branches and provides optional home-manager integration.

nixpkgs

User-level installation:

configuration.nix
users.users.alice.packages = [
  (pkgs.discord.override { withMoonlight = true; })
];

System-wide installation:

configuration.nix
environment.systemPackages = [
  (pkgs.discord.override { withMoonlight = true; })
];

flake

flake.nix
{
  inputs.moonlight = {
    url = "github:moonlight-mod/moonlight"; # Add `/develop` to the flake URL to use nightly.
    inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
  }
}

If you use home-manager, you can import moonlight’s module, and copy your existing moonlight config into your configuration:

home.nix
{ inputs, ... }:
{
  imports = [
    inputs.moonlight.homeModules.default
  ];


  programs.moonlight-mod = {
    enable = true;
    stable = {
      extensions = {
        allActivites.enabled = true;
        alwaysFocus.enabled = true;


        betterEmbedsYT = {
          enabled = true;
          config = {
            fullDescription = false;
            expandDescription = true;
          };
        };
      };
    };
  };
}