Windows Install

Since Navidrome needs to be run from the command line, it is suggested to use a service wrapper to make it into a service as it does not make sense to have a terminal window open whenever you want to use Navidrome. The examples below are for Shawl, NSSM and WinSW.

Using Shawl

Prebuilt binaries are available on the releases page of Shawl. It’s portable, so you can simply download it and put it anywhere without going through an installer. Otherwise if you have Rust installed, you can run cargo install shawl.

Here’s how you create the service with Shawl, then start it. Note that this has to be run from an administrator command prompt.

shawl add --name Navidrome -- "C:\Services\navidrome\navidrome.exe" -c "C:\Services\navidrome\navidrome.toml"
sc start Navidrome

Using NSSM

No installation is required for NSSM. Just grab the latest release from their download page and install the Navidrome service from an administrator command prompt using NSSM:

nssm install Navidrome

This opens a window where you can set the properties of the service; most notably, the path to the executable, the user account on which to run the service, the output files (stout and sterr) and file rotation. More information about the configurable options can be found here.

You can also bypass the GUI and install the service from the command line only. Below is an example:

nssm install Navidrome "C:\Services\navidrome\navidrome.exe"
nssm set Navidrome AppDirectory "C:\Services\navidrome\"
nssm set Navidrome DisplayName Navidrome
# The username and password of the user account under which the service will run.
nssm set Navidrome ObjectName "username" "password"
nssm set Navidrome AppStdout "C:\Services\navidrome\navidrome.log"
nssm set Navidrome AppStderr "C:\Services\navidrome\navidrome.log"
nssm set Navidrome AppRotateFiles 1
nssm set Navidrome AppRotateSeconds 86400
nssm set Navidrome AppRotateBytes 10240

# Start the service
sc start Navidrome

Using WinSW

To use WinSW, download the WinSW binary from their download page. WinSW also requires a configuration file (more details about the WinSW configuration file here) to be able to manage an application.

A basic example (where both Navidrome and the WinSW configuration file are in the same directory) for Navidrome is down below:

<service>
  <id>Navidrome</id>
  <name>Navidrome</name>
  <description>Modern Music Server and Streamer compatible with Subsonic/Airsonic</description>
  <executable>C:\Services\navidrome\navidrome.exe</executable>
  <arguments>-c navidrome.toml</arguments>
  <log mode="roll-by-size"></log>
</service>

Save this in a file named navidrome.xml. Then, run these commands from an administrator command prompt to install the service, start it and check its status:

winsw install navidrome.xml
winsw start navidrome.xml
winsw status navidrome.xml

Verify that the service has started as expected by navigating to http://localhost:4533, by checking the Services Management Console or by checking the log file that the service wrapper created.