What changed in Moonlight from 5 to 6

Download links:

• Windows Installer (Universal)
• Windows Portable x64 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.

OS Support Changes:

• Windows 10 (1809), Windows Server 2019, or later is now required
• 32-bit versions of Windows are no longer supported
• macOS Big Sur or later is now required
• macOS Sequoia is now supported

New Features:

• Experimental YUV 4:4:4 support for improved text clarity during remote desktop usage
  • Host must be running latest Sunshine pre-release build or v0.24.0 (when released)
  • Sunshine only currently supports YUV 4:4:4 encoding on Windows hosts
• HDR streaming is now supported with software decoding (requires GPU with Vulkan or Metal support)
• Bitrate limit can now be increased to 500 Mbps
  • These bitrates are not officially supported but can improve image quality if client and host can handle it (Ethernet strongly recommended).
• Audio decoding now uses 32-bit floating point format

Bugfixes:

• Fixed inability to connect to hosts on macOS Sequoia
• Fixed incorrect color range when streaming with AV1 from a host with an AMD GPU
• Fixed unexpected Left Control key input when pressing the AltGr key on Windows clients
• Fixed unexpected tearing artifacts when streaming with Intel Ivy Bridge GPUs
• Fixed Windows installer failures due to failed firewall exception registration
• Fixed GUI breakage on Raspberry Pi OS Buster or Ubuntu Bionic
• Fixed Vulkan video decoding crash with recent Nvidia drivers using the AppImage build
• Silenced log message spam when streaming HDR using Vulkan Video decoding on Linux
• Fixed inability to see video output on SpacemiT K1 due to incorrect overlay plane selection
• Fixed suboptimal pixel format selection with non-hwaccel FFmpeg hardware decoders
• Fixed incorrect hardware decoding warning on embedded systems that use custom OpenMAX hardware decoding patches
• Fixed build failure of libplacebo renderer on 32-bit platforms
• Updated community-contributed translations from Weblate

Dependency Updates:

• Updated Qt in Windows and macOS builds to 6.7.2
• Updated OpenSSL to 3.3.2
• Updated libplacebo to 7.349.0
• Updated libva in AppImage build to 2.22.0
• Updated WiX to 5.0.1

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"

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"

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
• 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 to CONFIG+=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"