moolight-toggler

This script automates the process of switching between a headless HDMI dongle and a physical monitor on Windows 11 for use with Nvidia's GameStream streaming service.

 

How it works

It reads some path information from a config.toml, located at the root of the project and wraps arround some commands to be passed to MonitorSwitcher.exe, which then does the heavy lifting and switches monitors whenever nvstreamer.exe is running or stops.

 

Installation

Requirements:

• Python 3.11 (this script depends uppon tomllib)
• Packages - psutil

 

Instructions for Powershell

• Download the files and make a profiles folder in the project directory:

git clone https://github.com/Rantunah/moonlight-toggler.git
cd moonlight-toggler
mkdir profiles

• Generate the profiles. Make sure you set up your screens correctly before you run each command.

  1. In Windows Display settings, setup the the physical monitor first, disable the remote monitor and then run the command:

     .\bin\MonitorSwitcher.exe -save:.\profiles\monitor.xml

  2. Do the same, but this time for the remote monitor:

     .\bin\MonitorSwitcher.exe -save:.\profiles\remote.xml

 

Instructions for the pre-built .exe

1. Unpack the .zip archive
   • It's recomended you keep the file structure that's in the archive.
2. Follow the instructions for profile generation above.

 

Usage:

.py script

1. Navigate to the project folder and start the server.
   • Make sure you have your virtual environment activated or the required packages installed

   cd <path to the moonlight-toggler folder>
   python .\src\main.py

2. To terminate this server you can click CTRL+C in the terminal or terminate the python.exe process in the Windows Task Manager, that has a location in properties that matches moonlight-toggler\src\main.py.

pre-built .exe

1. run moonlight_toggler.exe in the script folder
2. To terminate this server use the Windows Task Manager to terminate the moonlight_toggler.exe task.

• You can start the server at login by placing a shortcut to moonlight-toggler.exe in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

After this, your monitor should flash and change to the physical monitor profile. If you start a Moonlight streaming session, you'll see the physical screen disconnect as the remote screen comes off.

 

Build from source

Requirements:

• Packages - pyinstaller, psutil

It's not required to build from source to run the script, however, it's recommended to do it for easy startup on login.
Make sure that you've activated your virtual environment or have the requirements installed in your environment.

1. The executable is built running the following command:

   pyinstaller.exe .\src\main.py --windowed --onedir --noconfirm --name "moonlight_toggler"

   A script that does the above and eases the process of tidying up folder names during builds is also provided

   .\build.ps1

2. There will be a dist folder after the script compiles.

   New-Item -Path ".\dist\profiles" -ItemType Directory
   Copy-Item ".\bin" ".\dist\bin"

After this the script is ready for execution.

 

Known Issues

• When switching from a physical monitor with a larger scale than the remote one the cursor will remain scaled untill you leave the stream.
  • There's a built in hack that pauses the server for 10 seconds after the stream starts to allow the user enough time to quit the stream and start it again to reset the cursor size.

 

Acknowledgements

Monitor Profile Switcher v7.00

This project distributes the executable that is depended uppon, under compliance with it's license.
A big "thank you" to martink87 for producing this wonderful piece of software, that has accompanied me even before I started to learn how to program. It has enabled my whole workflow with moonlight-qt and GameStream. Without it, I would probably never have started to learn how to code.
You can find the source code for MonitorSwitcher.exe on it's SourceForge page.

Individuals

• DemonCat, over at the moonlight-qt discord server, helped me figure out some TCP connection. Big "thank you"!