Moonlight Wii U is a port of Moonlight Embedded, which is an open source client for Sunshine and NVIDIA GameStream. Moonlight allows you to stream your full collection of games and applications from your PC to other devices to play them remotely.

It's using the hardware-accelerated h264 library of the Wii U which results in pretty fast decoding.
Using my LAN Adapter 720p@60fps runs almost flawlessly.

Here's a little demo (and april fools) video:

Quick Start​

A Wii U LAN Adapter is recommended!

• Grab the latest version from the releases page and extract it to the root of your SD Card.
• Enter the IP of your Sunshine/GFE server in the moonlight.conf file located at sd:/wiiu/apps/moonlight.
• Ensure your Sunshine/GFE server and Wii U are on the same network.
• If using GFE, turn on Shield Streaming in the GFE settings.
• Pair Moonlight Wii U with the server.
• Accept the pairing confirmation on your PC.
• Connect to the server with Moonlight Wii U.
• Play games!

Configuration
You can configure all of the documented settings in the moonlight.conf file located at sd:/wiiu/apps/moonlight.
Note that a lot of option are commented out by default, to edit them you need to remove the # in front of them.

Supported controllers

• Gamepad (can be disabled with the disable_gamepad option).
• Up to 4 Wii U Pro Controllers and Wii Classic Controllers (Pro).
  The Gamepad needs to be disabled to use the 4th controller.

Troubleshooting​

Input doesn't work when using Sunshine​

Verify that you've installed Nefarius Virtual Gamepad and restarted your PC after the installation.

The stream disconnects frequently/immediately​

Depending on your network connection you need to adjust the configuration to find a stable bitrate and resolution.Try something like this to get started:

width = 854
height = 480
fps = 30

bitrate = 1500

Then slowly increase the bitrate until the stream is no longer stable.

Can't find app Steam​

Moonlight Wii U tries to start the app "Steam" by default, but sunshine does not have a default Application called "Steam".
You can either rename the app in the moonlight.conf to

app = Steam Big Picture

which is a default option in sunshine or add a new application called "Steam" in the sunshine configuration.

Releases: https://github.com/GaryOderNichts/moonlight-wiiu/releases
Source code: https://github.com/GaryOderNichts/moonlight-wiiu

Special thanks to agilly1989, rw and QuarkTheAwesome.

 

[Hei02]

Hi everyone, I'm using Sunshine on my computer + moonlight on wii u.
My settings : 5000 bitrate / 30 fps / 854x480
Big freeze issues, do you have advises please ? Do I need an ethernet adaptator ?

 

[Putcharles]

Hi everyone, I'm using Sunshine on my computer + moonlight on wii u.
My settings : 5000 bitrate / 30 fps / 854x480
Big freeze issues, do you have advises please ? Do I need an ethernet adaptator ?

yes, I’d highly recommend you to get an Ethernet adapter for the wiiu, even though its capped by the usb2 port speed, that’s much more reliable than wifi 2.4ghz

 

[bedwyr]

Hello,

Thanks for this great port, using it with Sunshine work fluently!
I have seen that Sunshine has recently added motion sensor capacity :
https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine/releases/tag/v0.21.0

Already available on Moonlight Qtsince August:
https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/releases/tag/v5.0.0
It seems to be also present on embeded version:
https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-embedded/releases/tag/v2.6.0
« Extended gamepad and input support features with Sunshine »

It would be really useful to have such a feature on the Wiiu Moonlight. Any chance to see that in a next release ?

 

[gesaugen]

First let me say big thanks to GaryOderNichts for this great project!

Second, i would like to propose features for next version:

1. a menu for choosing from multiple streaming servers.
It would be great if we could populate first line in moonlight.conf with multiple ip adresses (also with aliases if able?) because some of us have more streaming devices. Something like this:
address01; "name" = 192.168.1.1;"MainPC"
address02; "name" = 192.168.1.2;"GamePC"
...
and it would let you choose which one to connect to like this:
01 MainPC
02 GamePC
...

2. Wake-on-LAN feature as third option in menu above when choosing which server to stream from (like "Press + to wake on lan")

 

[GaryOderNichts]

Sorry for the long wait, but I finally had the time to make a new release:
Wii U port v1.6
Changelog:

• Major performance and networking improvements.
• Fixed a bug where the app would freeze after repeatedly dropping the connection.
• Switched to a modified libgamestream by @mariotaku.
• Updated moonlight-common-c.
• Minor QoL improvements and other bug fixes.

 

[BeeBlink]

Many, many thanks to @GaryOderNichts!

I have problems with the gamepad in two games so far: Bethesda's Skyrim and Fallout 3, after loading the games into the menu the gamepad doesn't respond to any input except the home button to exit Moonlight.

Does anyone have any solutions?

 

[Carnage]

Sorry for the long wait, but I finally had the time to make a new release:
Wii U port v1.6
Changelog:

• Major performance and networking improvements.
• Fixed a bug where the app would freeze after repeatedly dropping the connection.
• Switched to a modified libgamestream by @mariotaku.
• Updated moonlight-common-c.
• Minor QoL improvements and other bug fixes.

Wow, that's AWESOME!
Thanks for all your work.

 

[guardiandown]

i need help, i get failed to start connection when i try to start streaming (i paired it and that worked fine)

Post automatically merged: Mar 18, 2024

i need help, i get failed to start connection when i try to start streaming (i paired it and that worked fine)

 

[imbriandead]

I am having the same issue as guardiandown. Failed to start connection, but pairing works fine.

Edit: This seems to only be happening when trying to connect while the host is already running a game. Closing the game and relaunching it once connected worked.

 

[BrothDavv]

I managed to get this to work, but the volume via gamepad is kinda low. Any way to fix it? I'll use this mainly to play Steam games from bed

 

[dekgear]

Hi, does this work with lastest versions of GeForce Experience or does it need an to be downgraded? Can't get it to work, it just says it can't connect to server

 

[YukidaruPunch]

How can I make it so it does NOT open Steam Big Picture when first connecting it to stream? Just removing "steam" from the line gives an error, so I'm stumped.

 

[Carnage]

Hi, does this work with lastest versions of GeForce Experience or does it need an to be downgraded? Can't get it to work, it just says it can't connect to server

Check post #342:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/moonlight-wii-u.585995/page-18#post-10061021

 

[quirky_turnkey]

Thanks to @GaryOderNichts! for developing this version of moonlight

Has anyone ever figured out how to get WII U moonlight to work at 1080p 60 fps.
I purchased the lan & followed every tutorial & configuration imaginable but I just cannot get it to work correctly.

Best I could do was in-sync but very blocky. Would making the available Mpbs speeds higher help? Or is there some limit on what the Wii U can handle?

 

[olfenixlo]

Please tell me the vibration of the gamepad does not work? Or did I configure something wrong?

 

[Soukai]

Does anyone tried it with Apollo? The Moonlight fork?

 

[nothor]

I'm new into Moonlight Streaming and i'm amazed, really good streaming solution.

I have two questions:
- What are the best settings (resolution/fps) to play it with WiiU Gamepad (I see it blury)?
- Is it planned to add additional applications from sunshine, may be as a list, to avoid to modify the .conf file everytime I want to launch another app (i.e. Yuzu, Steam, Heroic)?

 

[GaryOderNichts]

I'm new into Moonlight Streaming and i'm amazed, really good streaming solution.

I have two questions:
- What are the best settings (resolution/fps) to play it with WiiU Gamepad (I see it blury)?
- Is it planned to add additional applications from sunshine, may be as a list, to avoid to modify the .conf file everytime I want to launch another app (i.e. Yuzu, Steam, Heroic)?

- 854x480 is the native gamepad resolution.
- You can use Steam as a launcher for Yuzu or install something like Playnite as a frontend to launch other apps.

 

[nothor]

- 854x480 is the native gamepad resolution.
- You can use Steam as a launcher for Yuzu or install something like Playnite as a frontend to launch other apps.

Thanks!
And yes, I think the best solution is to centralize all different apps through Steam and only load Steam with Moonlight.

 

[Goopa]

Is there a way to load on-screen statistics? Like in other moonlight clients? Framtime, fps, etc.