Disabling Sunshine auto-opening a browser on every boot

[Nitrousoxide]

Is there a way to stop sunshine from trying to open the config page in the browser on the first time it's started up on a boot? I don't feel like this is really necessary most of the time. I'd be perfectly fine having it default to that (since someone who just newly installed it probably needs that) but letting them flip it to "don't open the browser config on startup" when they are done getting it situated seems like a good option to have.

[ReenigneArcher]

Sunshine runs in the background as a service. If you click the icon from the start menu it's only opening the browser page.

[Hixbot2]

Starting the .desktop file on linux gnome automatically opens the browser page. I want to start it in the background on startup, but there seems to be no way to avoid the browser page, this is minimizing my fullscreen dosbox. As far as I know there is no way to have sunshine .desktop run at startup without the browser page. Running the flatpak from terminal also opens the browser page. How else can the flatpak service run at startup without the browser page opening?

[Nitrousoxide]

You can start it through a systemd .service file. Though it does not reliably start after the desktop is ready in my experience unless you use a .desktop file rather than a .service file with the various .targets.

[Unit]
Description=Sunshine is a self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight.
StartLimitIntervalSec=500
StartLimitBurst=5
After=graphical-session.target

[Service]
ExecStart=flatpak run dev.lizardbyte.app.Sunshine
ExecStop=flatpak kill dev.lizardbyte.app.Sunshine
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

is what my sunshine.service file looks like, but it will frequently start before the desktop is fully ready despite the
After=graphical-session.target

You can add a "wait" for some arbitrary time before the "flatpak run" portion of ExecStart, and that will (usually) fix the issue if you make it long enough. But since it's not really tied to whether the desktop is actually ready yet or not it's a hack and prone to a race condition and can still fail if the desktop is delayed for some reason.

Using a .desktop file does seem to fix the race condition as, at least for gnome, it will never try to start the autostart desktop files before the graphical session is ready enough for sunshine. Though I guess doing it this way brings up the browser window to manage the app.

This is why I wanted a toggle of whether starting the app brings up the browser to config it or not.

[Hixbot2]

I have limited success with the flatpak as a systemd service. I think you and I are in the same boat. As you say, perhaps a config toggle to choose if you want the web page to load on first run. Or perhaps a command line argument to run the .desktop without the browser starting.

[ReenigneArcher]

I originally assumed you were running Sunshine from Windows. Apologies.

Easiest way to get the behavior changed is to open a PR, and we will review.

[mattskiiau]

Also having this issue on steam deck. Pops up every boot or swap to desktop mode from gaming mode.

[DraakjeYoblama]

Sunshine runs in the background as a service. If you click the icon from the start menu it's only opening the browser page.

Does this mean there is a way to start sunshine on Windows without the browser opening? Or am I misinterpreting that?

Edit: I found it already, turns out I wasn't running autostart-service.bat as an administrator. But I didn't see the error because of the @echo off.

[ReenigneArcher]

Better to just use the installer on Windows.

[davidcm]

Hi, Windows user here.

I installed Sunshine via installer, disabling the option to start automatically. My most convenient workflow is to start Sunshine from the start menu, then a script in my Raspberry Pi detects the server and automatically runs Moonlight.

Everything works, but it's how Sunshine starts that doesn't feel quite elegant. First it shows the console, then Windows pops up an alert asking for permission to run sunshine.exe, then another console opens, then it automatically opens the web UI in Firefox.

Those are a lot of things that a normal user doesn't really need, when I'd only wish to click the Sunshine icon and have the tray icon appear.

Do you think if by any chance there's a possibility to smooth out the launching process?

Thanks!

[cgutman]

Everything works, but it's how Sunshine starts that doesn't feel quite elegant. First it shows the console, then Windows pops up an alert asking for permission to run sunshine.exe, then another console opens, then it automatically opens the web UI in Firefox.

We could potentially suppress one of those console windows or add separate shortcuts for the Web UI and background launch options, but no the launch experience can't really be much simpler that that. We must elevate to admin to start the service, so there's no way around that UAC prompt unless you want to disable UAC entirely on your system.

You could run the portable build without elevation, but then you won't be able to interact with any admin apps at all and performance will be degraded due to lack of permissions for Sunshine to increase its GPU priority.

[ld892012]

You can create a scheduled task to run manually Sunshine service without UAC and it will not open browser ^^

[Dalai-]

Was there ever a fix for this? It's super annoying to have the web UI popup every time I manually start Sunshine.

[terrapass]

@Dalai- Not sure about a fix, but a partial workaround I found on Windows 11 is to modify the Sunshine start menu shortcut to start the Sunshine service, instead of running sunshine.exe --shortcut, as it does by default.

Here are the steps I used:

1. Run install-service.bat as administrator (in my case it was located in C:\Program Files\Sunshine\scripts).
2. Find the shortcut you're using to run Sunshine (in my case inside C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Sunshine) and open its Properties (or make a copy and change its Properties, if you prefer).
3. Set Target to the following:

C:\Windows\System32\net.exe start "Sunshine Service"

4. Go to "Advanced..." and check "Run as administrator".
5. (optional) Restore the Sunshine icon by using "Change Icon..." and browsing to sunshine.exe, so the shortcut continues to look nice.

Now when I run Sunshine via this shortcut, a browser window with Web UI doesn't pop up. A downside is that UAC confirmation is displayed when you run the shortcut, and a console window can be seen for a couple of seconds as the service starts.

But at least it doesn't reopen Chrome and my 100+ tabs therein to needlessly display the Web UI now. 😅

[ld892012]

If you want manually start Sunshine without open a browser and without UAC prompt you can create a scheduled task that can be manually started with a shortcut :

• Go to Task Scheduler
• Click on "Create Task"
• Set a name ("Sunshine" for example)
• Check "Run with highest privileges"
• Go to "Actions" tab
• Click on "New" button
• In "Program/script:" paste C:\Windows\System32\net.exe
• In "Add arguments (optional):" paste start SunshineService
• Click on OK button
• Go to "Settings" tab and ensure "Allow the task to run on demand" is checked
• Click on OK button

Now your scheduled task is ready, you can now start Sunshine with cmd with this command :
schtasks.exe /RUN /TN <name of scheduled task>

If you want to create a shortcut :

• Right click on desktop or in a folder
• Click on "New" option then select "Shortcut"
• In "Type the location of the item" paste C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe /RUN /TN <name of scheduled task>
• Go to Next
• Type the name you want then click Finish

You can move this shortcut to the Start Menu :

• Open Explorer
• Click on location bar, paste %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs then press Enter
• Just move your shortcut in this folder

You can assign an icon for your shortcut with Properties/Shortcut/Change Icon

[GuyWhoDidThatThing]

This solution has one small issue for me. It does exactly as expected in that Sunshine is open on login automatically with no visible browser window. However, my Firefox then won't open due to an already running invisible process. When I force close this and re-open Firefox I'm forced to the Sunshine configuration page. Not sure if this happens with other browsers, but it is annoying to have to end that process on every boot. Is there no arg to stop Sunshine from auto-opening the configuration page in general?