Minimal Elite Dangerous Launcher

Cross-platform launcher for the game Elite Dangerous. Created mainly to avoid the long startup time of the default launcher when running on Linux. Can be used with Steam, Epic and Frontier accounts on both Windows and Linux.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Usage
  • Setup
    • Steam
    • Epic
    • Frontier
  • Arguments
    • Shared
    • Min-Launcher-Specific
  • Settings
  • Multi-Account
    • Frontier account via Steam or Epic
    • Epic account via Steam
  • Icon on Linux
  • Troubleshooting
  • Cache
• Build
  • Release Artifacts

Features

• Minimal Interface

  No waiting for a GUI to load. No waiting for the embedded web browser to load. No waiting for remote logs to be sent to FDev. For those that play on Linux, no waiting for the Wine environment.

• Auto-run

  Automatically starts the game instead of you having to click the Play button. The default launcher also supports this by using the /autorun flag.

• Auto-launch Processes

  Via the Settings file, you can specify additional programs to launch automatically. This includes things like Elite Log Agent and VoiceAttack. Processes are automatically closed when the game closes. This means you don't have to run the programs on computer startup or have to remember to start them before you launch the game.

• Auto-quit

  Automatically close the launcher when you close your game. The default launcher also supports this by using the /autoquit flag.

• Auto-restart

  Automatically restart your game. This can be useful if you're grinding for manufactured engineering materials. Off by default. For the Epic platform, this feature requires either Legendary or Heroic. See the Epic accounts and the /restart feature section for more details.

• Multi-Account

  Supports running your Steam, Epic and Frontier Store accounts with one game installation. See details for how this works.

Usage

This launcher doesn't setup/link new accounts. You'll need to either launch Elite Dangerous at least once with the default launcher or manually create and link your account(s) via the Linked Thirdparty Accounts section of Frontier's website. Linking is only required if you purchased the game via Steam or Epic.

Setup

Steam

1. Download the latest release for your operating system
2. Extract executable from the zip/tar archive
3. Place MinEdLauncher in your Elite Dangerous install location so that it's in the same folder as EDLaunch.exe. MinEdLauncher.Bootstrap is for Epic only and may be ignored. To find your install directory:
   1. Right click Elite Dangerous in your Steam library
   2. Select properties
   3. In the Local Files tab, click Browse Local Files...
4. Update your launch options to point to MinEdLauncher.

   1. Right click Elite Dangerous in your Steam library

   2. Select properties

   3. In the general tab, click Set Launch Options

   4. Windows users - Set the value to cmd /c "MinEdLauncher.exe %command% /autorun /autoquit"

      Linux users - The command will depend on which terminal emulator you use. Examples for alacritty, gnome-terminal (Gnome), konsole (KDE/Steam Deck) and Ptyxis (Bazzite) are below.

      alacritty -e ./MinEdLauncher %command% /autorun /autoquit

      gnome-terminal -- ./MinEdLauncher %command% /autorun /autoquit

      LD_LIBRARY_PATH="" konsole -e env LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" ./MinEdLauncher %command% /autorun /autoquit

      LD_LIBRARY_PATH="" ptyxis -- env LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" ./MinEdLauncher %command% /autorun /autoquit

      [!NOTE]
      Konsole and Ptyxis don't launch when started from the Steam runtime environment. Unsetting LD_LIBRARY_PATH allows them to launch but also causes Proton to run using system libraries causing undefined behavior. Resetting LD_LIBRARY_PATH inside the terminal emulator window solves this.

5. Launch your game as you normally would in Steam

Epic

1. Download the latest release for your operating system
2. Extract executable from the zip/tar archive
3. Place MinEdLauncher in your Elite Dangerous install location so that it's in the same folder as EDLaunch.exe.

Windows

Either configure the Epic client and use the provided Bootstrap exe or use legendary to launch the game

• Epic Client

  1. Delete or rename EDLaunch.exe (e.g. EDLaunch.exe.bak)
  2. Copy and rename MinEdLauncher.Bootstrap.exe to EDLaunch.exe. This step is required because Epic doesn't allow changing the game's startup application. If someone knows how to modify the game's manifest file (EliteDangerous/.egstore/*.manifest), this could be avoided. Please open a new issue if you can help with this. This also means any time the game updates or you verify your game files, you'll have to replace EDLaunch.exe with MinEdLauncher.Bootstrap.exe.
  3. Update your launch options to auto start your preferred product
     1. Click Settings in the Epic Games Launcher
     2. Scroll down to the Manage Games section and click Elite Dangerous
     3. Check Additional Command Line Arguments
     4. Set the value to /autorun /autoquit
  4. Launch your game as you normally would in Epic

• Legendary

  Use legendary's override-exe argument via windows terminal

  legendary.exe launch 9c203b6ed35846e8a4a9ff1e314f6593 --override-exe MinEdLauncher.exe /autorun /autoquit

Linux

This method utilizes Legendary.

1. Ensure you've authenticated, installed Elite Dangerous via legendary and setup your wine prefix
2. Pass an exchange code to the launcher by either
   1. Using the --dry-run flag and passing the arguments directly to MinEdLauncher via command substitution

      WINEPREFIX=/your/wine/prefix /path/to/MinEdLauncher $(legendary launch --dry-run 9c203b6ed35846e8a4a9ff1e314f6593 2>&1 | grep "Launch parameters" | cut -d':' -f 3-) /autorun /autoquit

   2. Using the get-token command and passing it to MinEdLauncher via Steam and command substitution

      steam -gameidlaunch 359320 -auth_password=$(legendary get-token 2>&1 | cut -d':' -f 3- | xargs)

Frontier

1. Download the latest release for Windows
2. Extract executables from the zip archive
3. Place MinEdLauncher.exe in your Elite Dangerous install location so that it's in the same folder as EDLaunch.exe. MinEdLauncher.Bootstrap is for Epic only and may be ignored.
4. Create a shortcut to MinEdLauncher.exe by right-clicking it and selecting create shortcut
5. Right-click the newly made shortcut and select properties
6. Add the /frontier profile-name argument + your other desired arguments to the end of the Target textbox (e.g. C:\path\to\MinEdLauncher.exe /frontier profile-name /autorun /autoquit)
7. Click Ok

You can place this shortcut anywhere. It doesn't have to live in the Elite Dangerous install folder.

Arguments

Shared

The following arguments are understood by both the vanilla launcher and the minimal launcher. Note that specifying a product flag will override whatever option you select when Steam prompts you to select a version of the game.

Argument	Effect
/autoquit	Automatically close the launcher when the game starts
/autorun	Automatically start selected product when launcher starts
/ed	Select Legacy Elite Dangerous as the startup product
/edh	Select Legacy Horizons as the startup product
/eda	Select Elite Dangerous Arena as the startup product
/vr	Tell the game that you want to play in VR mode
-auth_password	Epic exchange code. Used for authenticating with Epic

Min Launcher Specific

The following arguments are in addition to the above:

Argument	Effect
/autoquit waitForExit	Automatically close the launcher when the game closes
/edo	Select Elite Dangerous Odyssey as the startup product
/edh4	Select Elite Dangerous Horizons as the startup product
/frontier profile-name	Use this argument to login with a Frontier Store account. profile-name can be any name you want. Keep it to letters, numbers, dashes and underscores. See more details in the multi-account section
/restart delay	Restart the game after it has closed with delay being the number of seconds given to cancel the restart (i.e /restart 3)
/dryrun	Prints output without launching any processes
/skipInstallPrompt	Skips the prompt to install uninstalled products when /autorun is not specified
/settingsOverlay path	Load a partial settings overlay file on top of the default settings.json. See Settings Overlay below

Epic accounts and the /restart feature

The restart feature requires either Legendary or Heroic to work with Epic accounts.

After Elite launches, it invalidates the launcher's initial Epic auth token and doesn't communicate the new token which then prevents the ability to login with FDev servers a second time. To work around this, min-ed-launcher can use a more privileged Epic token (created by Legendary/Heroic) to generate the needed auth tokens. Simply logging in with Legendary or Heroic will allow min-ed-launcher to restart without re-launching.

Once you've logged in with either, you can go back to using the normal Epic launcher if you wish. It will require re-logging in every few days though, so it may be preferable to just stick with the alternate launchers.

Settings

The settings file controls additional settings for the launcher that go beyond what the default launcher supports. The location of this file is in the standard config location for your operating system. If this file doesn't exist, it will be created on launcher startup.

Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\min-ed-launcher\settings.json

Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/min-ed-launcher/settings.json (~/.config if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME isn't set)

Key	Type	Default	Description
apiUri	string	"https://api.zaonce.net"	FDev API base URI
watchForCrashes	bool	false	Launch game via WatchDog64.exe
gameLocation	string	null	Path to game install folder. Auto-detected if omitted
language	string	null	Game language (en, or a language folder name)
autoUpdate	bool	true	Auto-update out-of-date games
checkForLauncherUpdates	bool	true	Check for new min-ed-launcher versions
maxConcurrentDownloads	int	4	Max simultaneous update downloads
forceUpdate	array	[]	SKUs to force-update via FDev servers
processes	array	[]	Programs to launch before the game. See process fields below
shutdownProcesses	array	[]	Programs to launch after game shutdown. Same fields as processes
shutdownTimeout	int	10	Seconds to wait before force-killing processes
filterOverrides	array	[]	Override product filters for launch flags (e.g. /edo, /edh)
additionalProducts	array	[]	Extra products for the authorized list
cacheDir	string	(OS default)	Directory for update downloads. See cache section for default location
gameStartDelay	int	0	Seconds to wait after starting processes but before launching the game
shutdownDelay	int	0	Seconds to wait before closing processes

Process fields

Field	Type	Default	Description
fileName	string	(required)	Path to executable
arguments	string	null	Command-line arguments
restartOnRelaunch	bool	false	Restart the process when the game restarts via /restart
keepOpen	bool	false	Don't stop this process when the launcher exits

Note

When specifying a path for gameLocation, cacheDir or processes.fileName on Windows, it's required to escape backslashes. Make sure to use a double backslash (\\) instead of a single backslash (\).

Note

Launching Flatpaks via processes through Steam requires resetting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH env var and setting MEL_LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the host's LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

LD_LIBRARY_PATH="" konsole -e env MEL_LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" ./MinEdLauncher %command% /autorun /autoquit

{
  "apiUri": "https://api.zaonce.net",
  "watchForCrashes": false,
  "gameLocation": null,
  "language": "en",
  "autoUpdate": true,
  "checkForLauncherUpdates": true,
  "maxConcurrentDownloads": 4,
  "forceUpdate": ["PUBLIC_TEST_SERVER_OD"],
  "cacheDir": "C:\\path\\to\\dir",
  "gameStartDelay": 0,
  "shutdownDelay": 0,
  "processes": [
    {
      "fileName": "C:\\path\\to\\app.exe"
    },
    {
      "fileName": "C:\\path\\to\\app2.exe",
      "arguments": "--arg1 --arg2",
      "restartOnRelaunch": true,
      "keepOpen": true
    }
  ],
  "shutdownProcesses": [
    {
      "fileName": "C:\\path\\to\\app.exe",
      "arguments": "--arg1 --arg2"
    }
  ],
  "shutdownTimeout": 10,
  "filterOverrides": [
    { "sku": "FORC-FDEV-DO-1000", "filter": "edo" },
    { "sku": "FORC-FDEV-DO-38-IN-40", "filter": "edh4" }
  ],
  "additionalProducts": [{
    "filter": "edh4",
    "directory": "elite-dangerous-odyssey-64",
    "serverargs": "",
    "gameargs": "SeasonTwo",
    "sortkey": "04",
    "product_name": "Elite Dangerous: Horizons (4.0)",
    "product_sku": "FORC-FDEV-DO-38-IN-40"
  }]
}

Settings Overlay

The /settingsOverlay <path> flag loads a partial JSON file on top of the default settings.json. The overlay only needs to contain the keys you want to override — all other settings are inherited from the base file.

For example, to suppress all auto-launched processes for a specific profile, create a file like:

{
  "processes": []
}

Then use it with: ./MinEdLauncher /frontier alice /settingsOverlay ~/.config/min-ed-launcher/alice.json /autorun

Merge rules:

• Scalar values (bool, int, string) — overlay wins if the key is present
• Lists (processes, shutdownProcesses, etc.) — overlay replaces the base list if the key is present, even if empty
• Keys not present in the overlay inherit their value from the base settings.json

Multi-Account

Frontier account via Steam or Epic

By using the /frontier profile-name argument, you can login with any number of Frontier accounts with a single game installation. Your launch command might look like the following

Windows: cmd /c "MinEdLauncher.exe %command% /frontier profile-name /autorun /autoquit"

Linux: alacritty -e ./MinEdLauncher %command% /frontier profile-name /autorun /autoquit

See the setup section above for how you might run this on your platform.

If you have multiple frontier accounts, use a different profile name for each of them. After successfully logging in, there will be a .cred file created in either %LOCALAPPDATA%\min-ed-launcher\ or $XDG_CONFIG_DIR/min-ed-launcher/ (depending on OS). This file stores your username, password and machine token. On Windows, the password and machine token are encrypted via DPAPI (same as the vanilla launcher). On Linux, no encryption happens but the file permissions are set to 600. If you login once and then decide you want to login again (refresh machine token), you can delete the appropriate .cred file.

Epic account via Steam

There is rudimentary support for running your Epic account via Steam.

In order to authenticate with an Epic account:

1. Get an Epic exchange code. This part is really clunky and will need to be done for every launch as the exchange code expires after one use. Get a code via Legendary.

   legendary get-token

2. Add the -auth_password=code argument to your launch options. cmd /c "MinEdLauncher.exe %command% /autoquit -auth_password=code"

   You can also create a separate shortcut. Right click game in your Steam library and create desktop shortcut. Edit the properties of the shortcut to include the -auth_password=code argument. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -gameidlaunch 359320 -auth_password=code. Then just edit this shortcut with the new exchange code each time instead of changing your Steam launch options.

Note

If you want to use Steam's installation, you'll need to set gameLocation in your settings file. For example

"gameLocation": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Elite Dangerous",

Tip

If you're just looking to run an Epic account with Steam's game files, you can set the gameLocation as noted above, use legendary as outlined in the legendary section of the Epic setup and include the --skip-version-check argument.

legendary.exe launch 9c203b6ed35846e8a4a9ff1e314f6593 --skip-version-check --override-exe MinEdLauncher.exe /autorun /autoquit

Steam Shortcuts

You can create multiple shortcuts with different launch parameters. Prefer avoiding the steam protocol handler as it has some quirks that make it more of a pain to use.

Example Target field for a shortcut that launches Odyssey:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -gameidlaunch 359320 /edo

Icon on Linux

1. Copy the included min-ed-launcher.svg file to your environment's default icon location

   Common icon locations are ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps and /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps.

2. Copy the included min-ed-launcher.desktop file to your environment's default application launcher location

   Common locations are ~/.local/share/applications and /usr/share/applications

   You may need to update your cache by running update-desktop-database pointed at whereever you copied the desktop file. e.g. update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/

3. Set the WM_CLASS/Application Id property in your launch options. How you do this will depend on your terminal emulator. Examples are below:

   • Alacritty - alacritty --class min-ed-launcher -e ./MinEdLauncher %command% /autorun /autoquit
   • kitty - kitty --class min-ed-launcher ./MinEdLauncher %command% /autorun /autoquit

Troubleshooting

Debug logging is placed in the standard log location for your operating system:

• Windows - %LOCALAPPDATA%\min-ed-launcher\min-ed-launcher.log
• Linux - $XDG_STATE_HOME/min-ed-launcher/min-ed-launcher.log (~/.local/state if $XDG_STATE_HOME isn't set)

Cache

When updating your game files, the launcher downloads updates into a temporary directory. You may delete these files at any time. The location of these files are in the standard cache location for your operating system.

Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\min-ed-launcher\cache

Linux: $XDG_CACHE_HOME/min-ed-launcher (~/.cache if $XDG_CACHE_HOME isn't set)

You can override the default location by specifying the cacheDir property in your settings.

Build

Two different toolchains are needed to build the entire project. .NET is used for the launcher itself and Rust is used for the bootstrapper. Since the bootstrapper is only used for users playing via Epic, you may not need to setup both.

Launcher

1. Install the .Net SDK

   At least version 8. In general, min-ed-launcher follows the latest version of the SDK.

2. Clone repository and build

   $ git clone https://github.com/rfvgyhn/min-ed-launcher
   $ cd min-ed-launcher
   $ dotnet build -c Release
   $ dotnet run -c Release --project src/MinEdLauncher/MinEdLauncher.fsproj
   

   If you'd prefer a single, self-contained binary, use publish instead of build. See publish.sh or publish.ps1 for more details.

Bootstrapper

This project is Windows specific and won't compile on other operating systems.

1. Install Rust

   In general, min-ed-launcher follows the latest stable version of the compiler.

2. After cloning the repo (mentioned above), compile via cargo:

   $ cargo build --release
   $ .\target\release\bootstrap.exe
   

Release Artifacts

Run either publish.sh or publish.ps1 depending on your OS. These scripts make use of dotnet publish. Artifacts will end up in the artifactsfolder.

Note that the bootstrap project specifically targets Windows and won't publish on a non-Windows machine.