Lightweight system tray application for managing WSL distributions on Windows.

WSL Nexus provides a minimal, always-available interface for controlling WSL distributions. It lives in the system tray with per-distribution status icons and offers a glassmorphism dashboard for quick management.

• Real-time monitoring of all WSL distributions (Running / Stopped)
• One-click Start / Stop from the dashboard or system tray context menu
• Terminal launcher with Windows Terminal support (CMD fallback)
• Per-distribution tray icons with color-coded status (green = running, gray = stopped)
• Minimize to tray on window close - stays resident for background monitoring
• Start with Windows via registry integration (HKCU\...\Run)
• Glassmorphism UI with dark theme

Grab the latest release from the Releases page:

• WSL Nexus Setup x.x.x.exe - Installer (NSIS)
• WSL Nexus x.x.x.exe - Portable

git clone https://github.com/infinition/nexus-wsl2.git
cd nexus-wsl2
npm install
npm start        # dev mode
npm run dist     # build .exe

• Windows 10 or 11
• WSL enabled with at least one distribution installed

main.js        Electron main process - WSL commands, tray management, registry
preload.js     Context bridge (IPC API exposure)
renderer.js    UI logic - card rendering, state management
index.html     Dashboard layout
styles.css     Glassmorphism theme

• iconv-lite for decoding wsl --list --verbose output (UTF-16LE on most systems)
• Registry-based auto-launch (reg add/query/delete) instead of app.setLoginItemSettings for reliability on Windows
• Detached spawn with sleep to keep distributions alive after start
• Per-distro tray icons rather than a single aggregate icon for direct status visibility

MIT