punktfunk/docs-site/content/docs/web-console.md

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The Web Console	Enable the Punktfunk browser console, read or change its login password, arm PIN pairing, and what every page in it does.

The web console is the browser UI for a Punktfunk host — live status, pairing, display policy, the game library, logs, plugins and host updates. It ships as the punktfunk-web systemd user unit on Linux and runs under the Punktfunk Host service on Windows, and serves on https://<host-ip>:47992 (HTTPS with the host's own self-signed identity cert — your browser warns once; trust it and continue). It's the surface you expose on the LAN to administer the host; the host's own management API (47990) keeps every admin action loopback-only and off-loopback serves only read-only status + game-library browsing to paired clients.

New here? Read Security & Safe Use first — a streaming host is remote control of the machine, so keep it on a trusted LAN or VPN and require pairing.

Enable the console

• Linux packages (apt / RPM / Bazzite): on Ubuntu the host package is punktfunk-host and on Fedora/Bazzite it's punktfunk; either way it recommends punktfunk-web, so your package manager pulls the console in with the host (the Bazzite sysext image already contains it). Enable and start it as your desktop user, then open the URL:

  systemctl --user enable --now punktfunk-web
  # then browse to https://<host-ip>:47992
  

• Arch / CachyOS (pacman): the console is an optional package here, and pacman never installs optional dependencies — so install it yourself from the same repo the host came from (see Arch Linux), then enable it exactly as above. Take it as a full -Syu, never a bare pacman -S, so you don't end up on a partial upgrade:

  sudo pacman -Syu punktfunk-web
  systemctl --user enable --now punktfunk-web
  

• Windows host: the installer sets up the console and its runtime; the Punktfunk Host service runs it and automatically brings it back if it ever stops. There is nothing to enable — open https://<this-PC>:47992.

• SteamOS host: the install script builds and starts the console as a user service for you. It prints the URL when it finishes.

Login password

The console is password-protected. Where that password lives and how you change it depends on the host platform.

Linux packages (apt / RPM / Bazzite). On first start punktfunk-web-init generates a random password and saves it to ~/.config/punktfunk/web-password (as PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=…). Read it back from the init service's journal or straight from the file:

journalctl --user -u punktfunk-web-init | sed -n 's/.*password generated: //p'
sed -n 's/^PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=//p' ~/.config/punktfunk/web-password

To set your own, edit that file (PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=<your-password>) and restart the console: systemctl --user restart punktfunk-web.

SteamOS host. Same idea, but the install script writes the generated password to ~/.config/punktfunk/web.env and prints it at the end of the install run:

sed -n 's/^PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=//p' ~/.config/punktfunk/web.env

Edit that file and systemctl --user restart punktfunk-web to change it.

Windows host. You choose the password during install — a secure random default is pre-filled and shown again on the installer's final page. It's stored in %ProgramData%\punktfunk\web-password (as PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=…), readable only by Administrators and SYSTEM. To change it, edit the file and restart the Punktfunk Host service (which runs the console) in an elevated PowerShell:

notepad "$env:ProgramData\punktfunk\web-password"   # set PUNKTFUNK_UI_PASSWORD=<your-password>
punktfunk-host service restart

Forgot it? See Forgot your Password?.

Arm pairing

The host requires PIN pairing by default (secure on a LAN). To connect the first time, open the console, log in, then open Pairing in the sidebar and click Pair a device. The host shows a one-time 4-digit PIN — enter it on your client to pair. If the device already tried to connect it appears under Waiting for approval instead; approving it pairs it immediately, no PIN needed. See Pairing & Trust for the full trust model and how to approve or remove devices later.

What's in it

Nine destinations in the sidebar (a More tab on a phone holds the last five):

• Dashboard — live status: whether video and audio are streaming, the active sessions with their codec, resolution, frame rate and bitrate, which games are running, and how many clients are paired. Buttons here stop a session or ask the encoder for a fresh keyframe.
• Host — this host's identity (hostname, OS, local IP, version, unique id), the codecs it advertises, its ports, the Updates card (see Updating the Host), the GPUs card — Automatic, or prefer one GPU for capture and encode, applied to the next session — and the compositor backends it found.
• Virtual displays — the policy for the display each session gets, and the Streamed screen picker. See Virtual displays.
• Library — the games every client sees: turn a launcher source on or off, add or edit a custom title with its own art and launch command. See Your game library.
• Performance — arm a capture, run a session, stop it, and read the recording back as per-stage latency, throughput and health graphs.
• Logs — the host's recent log stream: follow it live, filter by level, search it, and download or share it for a bug report.
• Pairing — arm a PIN, approve or deny devices waiting for approval, and unpair a device. A second PIN box for Moonlight/GameStream clients appears only when this host runs the GameStream plane.
• Plugins — the plugin store's Browse, Installed and Sources tabs plus the plugin runner switch; an installed plugin with a UI gets its own entry below. See Plugins.
• Settings — the console's language, and Sign out.