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moonlight moonlight moonlight
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Installation

There are several ways to install moonlight. It is suggested to use the installer or CLI if you are not a developer.

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.

moonlight-cli

A command line installer can be compiled from source manually and used to patch moonlight.

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

After first launch, moonlight will create a config directory in the Electron appData path named moonlight-mod:

  • Windows: %AppData%/moonlight-mod
  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/moonlight-mod
  • Linux: ~/.config/moonlight-mod

Each Discord branch has its own .json file for configuration.

Browser

moonlight optionally runs in the browser. To use it, 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.

Browser support is experimental and may be unreliable. Developing extensions or using custom repositories is not supported with the browser extension.

Nix

moonlight offers a nixpkgs package and a flake, which has the option to use nightly if the develop branch is selected and provides declarative home-manager configuration options.

Please leave an issue on the nixpkgs or moonlight repository depending on which one you are using in case of a build failure.

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";
  }
}
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;
          };
        };
      };
    };
  };
}