Purpose: WinSW wraps and manages applications as Windows services.
Executable support: The project describes WinSW as able to host any executable as a Windows service.
Configuration: A required XML configuration file controls the behavior of the Windows service.
Service commands: Its command line supports installing, uninstalling, starting, stopping, restarting, checking status, and refreshing services.
Failure handling: Configuration can specify actions such as restarting the service or rebooting Windows after a process failure.
Logging: WinSW can capture stdout and stderr, with append, reset, ignore, and log rotation modes.
Download integration: The wrapper can download resources from URLs before launching the configured application, with options for authentication and proxies.
Security controls: Service configuration supports service accounts and an SDDL security descriptor; the documentation warns that Basic credentials over HTTP are sent in clear text.
Supported platform: WinSW is for Windows; its project manifesto says Unix systems should use their own daemon conventions.
Runtime requirements: WinSW 3 runs on Windows with .NET Framework 4.6.1 or later, or via provided native 32-bit and 64-bit executables based on .NET 7.
Distribution: Binaries are available through GitHub Releases, with CI builds on Azure Pipelines and 2.x packages on NuGet and Maven.
License: The WinSW software is licensed under the MIT license.
Security policy: The repository security page says the project has no SECURITY.md file and no published security advisories.
Project audience: The manifesto says WinSW can host any executable, whereas the Java Service Wrapper project it compares against can host only Java applications.
Price from: Free

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Sources

winsw.github.io· checked 4 Oct 2026
winsw.github.io/v3/MANIFEST/· checked 4 Oct 2026
winsw.github.io/documentation/v3/docs/xml-config-file/· checked 4 Oct 2026
winsw.github.io/documentation/v3/docs/cli-commands/· checked 4 Oct 2026
winsw.github.io/documentation/v3/docs/logging-and-error· checked 4 Oct 2026
github.com/winsw/winsw· checked 4 Oct 2026
github.com/winsw/winsw/security· checked 4 Oct 2026