Moonshine: Rust-based headless game streaming server for Moonlight
Original: Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
Why This Matters
Rust-based open-source game streaming expands self-hosted remote play options beyond proprietary solutions like GeForce NOW.
Moonshine is an open-source, Rust-written headless streaming server that lets users stream PC games to any Moonlight client. It supports hardware-accelerated H.264, H.265, and AV1 encoding, requires no monitor or HDMI dummy plug, and keeps each stream session isolated from the host desktop.
Moonshine (github.com/hgaiser/moonshine) is a headless game streaming server written in Rust, designed to work with Moonlight clients across any device. The project has accumulated 583 stars and 41 forks on GitHub. Key features include isolated streaming sessions — each stream runs in its own compositor, fully separate from the host desktop environment, allowing the host PC to remain usable during a session. The server operates without a physical monitor or HDMI dummy plug, making it suitable for headless server deployments. Hardware video encoding is supported via the GPU for H.264, H.265, and AV1 formats, though the project notes a warning regarding AV1 support. Keyboard, mouse, and controller inputs are forwarded back to the host machine, enabling remote gameplay as if the user were physically present. The project is licensed under the BSD-2-Clause license.