dsh-wsl-tray

Running a DSH Web server inside WSL is straightforward in itself, but every start, stop, or restart means bouncing between the Windows desktop and a WSL terminal with no immediate visual feedback. dsh-wsl-tray collapses that loop into a single desktop shortcut: double-click launches DSH fully in the background with zero console windows, and your default browser opens exactly once the moment the service answers.

Beyond the shortcut, a system-tray icon exposes a right-click menu for opening the web page, regenerating the shortcut, restarting the DSH service, pausing or resuming the watchdog, and exiting. Inside the tray process, a watchdog daemon probes the DSH URL every 10 seconds, clearly distinguishing refused connections, timeouts, and non-200 status codes in the log. Three consecutive failed probes mark the service as down and trigger a restart via wsl.exe; the watchdog then waits up to 180 seconds for a successful response. If three consecutive restarts fail, the watchdog pauses instead of looping indefinitely, and it can be resumed from the tray menu or automatically the instant DSH answers again. Every state transition is timestamped into watchdog.log and the current state-machine snapshot is written to watchdog-status.json, both viewable live on the DSH configuration card.

If you run DSH Web inside WSL and would rather manage it entirely from the Windows desktop—launching, monitoring, and auto-restarting without touching a terminal—this plugin bundles that start-monitor-restart loop into one shortcut and one tray icon. Place the shortcut in the Windows Startup folder and the watchdog follows you across reboots, keeping DSH ready the moment you sit down.