Getting started

What is DartRelay?

DartRelay puts your Windows applications and desktops in a web browser. You install it on a server you own, your staff open a browser and sign in, and the applications you have given them open as tabs inside the page. This page explains what DartRelay is, who it is for and what it can and cannot do, so you can decide where to start.

DartRelay in one paragraph

DartRelay is a self-hosted platform for delivering Windows applications and desktops to a web browser. A company installs it on its own server, on its own network. Staff open a browser, go to an address such as https://apps.example.com, sign in, and see the applications and desktops that have been assigned to them. Clicking one opens a live Windows session as a tab inside the same page. There is no client software, no browser plug-in and no VPN client to install. Administrators publish applications from their own Windows machines, decide who may see each one, and brand the whole thing as their own.

Who it is for

DartRelay is built for small and mid-size organisations that run Windows software and want people to reach it from anywhere, on any device with a browser, without managing a client on every laptop. Typical situations:

An accounting or line-of-business program that only runs on Windows, which staff need from home or from a branch office.
Older applications (written in tools such as Delphi, Visual Basic 6 or FoxPro) that cannot be rewritten but still have to be reached remotely.
A service provider who hosts software for several customers and wants each customer to arrive at their own address with their own branding.
Shared terminals, kiosks or thin clients where a full desktop or one single application should open the moment someone signs in.

There are three groups of people who meet DartRelay, and this help centre is organised around them:

Who	What they do	Where to read
End users	Sign in to the portal, open their applications and desktops, move files and print.	Signing in and out and the other "Using the portal" pages
Administrators	Install DartRelay, add hosts, publish resources, give people access, brand the portal and look after security.	Everything from Installing DartRelay onwards
Decision makers	Want to know that it is self-hosted, works with the directory they already have, and looks like their own company.	This page and How DartRelay works

What your users see

An end user never needs to know how DartRelay works. Their experience is:

A sign-in page carrying your branding: your logo, colours, background, wording and footer. Depending on how you set it up, it can also ask them to accept terms of use (an Agreement), show a notice (an Announcement), ask for a second factor such as a six-digit code, or show a picture-verification challenge.
My Resources: their applications and desktops shown as tiles or a list, grouped into categories or folders, with search and sorting. Anything they use often can be starred into a Favourites tab.
A session in a tab. Clicking a resource opens it as a tab along the top of the same page. Several can be open at once. Each tab offers full screen, file transfer (when you allow it) and a way to disconnect. Closing the tab ends the session.
A profile page where they can change their password, choose a language, date format and time zone, and manage their authenticator devices.

The portal is available in English, Dutch, Spanish, French and German, chosen automatically from the visitor's browser. Every piece of text a portal user can see can be edited, and you can add further languages. The administrator console itself is in English only.

What you can publish

DartRelay calls the things you give people Resources. There are three kinds:

Resource	What the user gets	Typical use
An application	One program, opened as its own window in a tab, without the rest of the Windows desktop around it.	An accounting package, a CRM client, a legacy business application.
A desktop	The full Windows desktop of a host.	Staff who work in many programs at once, or administrators.
A web application	A link that opens a web address in a new browser tab.	Putting an intranet site or a cloud service beside the Windows applications.

Applications and desktops come from hosts: the Windows machines you publish from. DartRelay is agentless, which means nothing is installed on a host. It reaches each host over the network with standard Windows protocols. See Adding and preparing hosts.

What administrators do

Administrators work in the console, a website served by DartRelay itself. From the console you:

Add hosts and check that each one is ready. DartRelay can detect whether a Windows Server has the Remote Desktop Session Host role and install it for you. See Adding and preparing hosts.
Publish resources, picking applications from a list of what is actually installed on the host. Saving is publishing: there is no separate publish button. See Publishing applications.
Give people access, using DartRelay's own accounts, Windows local accounts, Active Directory users and groups, or both. See Giving people access to resources.
Brand the portal with themes built from blocks, a different look for each address, Announcements and Agreements. See Themes and Tenancy & Branding.
Protect sign-in with two-factor authentication, password policy, lockout, a human check and network restrictions. See Sign-in protection.
Watch and manage live sessions, read the audit log and manage the licence. See Monitoring live sessions and Licensing and Relay Seats.

Key capabilities

Self-hosted, one installer

DartRelay runs on your own server and your own network. Nothing about a session leaves your infrastructure. It ships as one installer with everything it needs; there are no prerequisites to install separately. It can be installed on Windows (from Windows XP through Windows 11, and Windows Server, in 32-bit or 64-bit editions, and Windows on ARM64) and on Linux x64. See System requirements.

Your choice of database

DartRelay keeps its settings in a database. It can use a built-in SQLite database file that needs no setting up, or an existing SQL Server, MySQL or PostgreSQL server. See Databases and migration.

Works with the directory you already have

People can sign in with accounts you create in DartRelay, with Windows local accounts on the DartRelay server, or with Active Directory accounts. Active Directory users and groups can be given access directly, and administrator roles can be mapped to directory groups. See Active Directory and multiple domains.

Several customers or departments from one installation

Each address (hostname) people browse to can have its own theme, its own list of who may sign in there, its own Announcements and its own automatic launch rules. This is how one installation can serve several customers, each on their own address with their own branding. It is not data separation: everything still shares one database, one console and one pool of seats. See Tenancy & Branding.

One server, or several

Most organisations run DartRelay on one server. You can also run several DartRelay servers behind a load balancer, sharing one database, for extra capacity and so you can take one server out for maintenance. A pool is not failover: a session stays on the server it started on. See Running several servers (pools).

What's new in versions 2.0 and 2.1

Version 2.0 reaches more of your organisation and keeps out the rest:

Several Active Directory domains, including domains that do not trust each other, listed and managed under Directories. See Active Directory and multiple domains.
Network access rules and blocked addresses, which limit the portal or the console to the network addresses you list. See Sign-in protection.
Shared Windows logins handled automatically, so people sharing one saved account never see each other's work. See Host session options.

Version 2.1 adds new ways to sign in:

Sign in with Microsoft (Microsoft Entra ID). See Microsoft Entra ID sign-in.
OpenID Connect sign-in for other identity providers. See OpenID Connect sign-in.
Relay Pass, which logs people on to Windows with a short-lived certificate instead of a password. See Relay Pass (passwordless Windows logon).
Sessions for the same person, which decides what happens when someone uses a host from several devices. See Host session options.

The full list of changes in every version is in the release notes.

Licensing in brief

DartRelay is licensed by Relay Seat. A Relay Seat is one device with a live session. One device may run as many applications and desktops as it likes, on as many hosts, for one seat. The seat is released as soon as that device's last session ends. You activate DartRelay with a product key, and one licence can be shared between several separate installations. An installation that has no valid licence refuses to launch anything. See Licensing and Relay Seats and Sharing one licence between installations.

What DartRelay does not do

It is worth knowing the limits before you plan:

It does not replace Windows licensing. Hosts still need the Windows and Remote Desktop Services licences Microsoft requires. DartRelay reports a host's Remote Desktop licensing state to help you, but it does not supply those licences.
It is not a high-availability cluster. If a DartRelay server stops, the sessions running through it end. Several servers give you capacity and maintenance headroom, not failover.
It does not isolate tenants from each other. Controlling who may sign in at an address does not stop that person signing in at another address that admits them. See Tenancy & Branding.
The console is English only. Only the portal is translated.

Where to start

If you are setting DartRelay up for the first time, work through the Getting started pages in order:

How DartRelay works: the pieces and how a session travels.
System requirements: what you need before you install.
Installing DartRelay: running the installer.
Quick start: your first published application: from a fresh installation to an application open in a browser.