Set up the Windows host

What you need

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
• An NVIDIA GPU with NVENC is strongly recommended (RTX 20-series or newer for HEVC; older Maxwell+ cards work, H.264-only). Without one the host falls back to software encode — usable, but higher CPU and lower quality at the same bitrate.
• An up-to-date NVIDIA driver. NVENC is loaded from the driver; the installer ships no extra DLLs.
• Administrator rights.

Install

1. Run the installer from the downloads page. SmartScreen will warn because beta builds are not code-signed yet — click More info → Run anyway.
2. The wizard installs nearzero-host.exe to C:\Program Files\NearZero\, registers the NearZero Host Windows service (auto-start), opens an inbound firewall rule for UDP 48010, and adds a Start Menu shortcut to the admin UI.
3. When the wizard finishes, the service is already running. No reboot. Installing over an older version upgrades in place and keeps your configuration.

First run: set the admin password

1. Open the Start Menu, type “NearZero”, and click NearZero Host — Admin UI (or browse to https://127.0.0.1:48011/ directly).
2. Your browser will warn about a self-signed certificate — that’s expected; the admin server pins its own cert locally. Click through.
3. Enter the setup code and set an admin password. The code is the first line of C:\ProgramData\NearZero\admin_setup_code.txt — the installer’s last page offers to open it for you; otherwise open it from an elevated editor, since the folder is readable by administrators only. The page asks for it because every program on the computer can reach 127.0.0.1, and only an administrator should be able to claim the admin UI. The code changes whenever the host restarts, and the file is deleted once the password is set.
4. The admin password protects the admin UI itself and is independent of the optional connection password that gates streaming.

Daily use

The service starts at boot; you never launch anything by hand. The tray icon under the clock shows session state — gray is idle, green is a connected client, red is an error. Right-click it to open the admin UI, open the logs folder, restart the streaming engine cleanly, or stop the service.

Logs live at C:\ProgramData\NearZero\logs\host.YYYY-MM-DD.log if you ever need to tell us what happened; right-click the tray icon → Open logs folder takes you there. The last 14 days are kept; older ones are deleted for you. The logs folder is readable by every account on the computer, so opening a log needs no administrator prompt. Everything else in C:\ProgramData\NearZero still needs an administrator.

Uninstalling

Settings → Apps → Installed apps → NearZero Host → Uninstall. The service, firewall rule and binaries all go.

The uninstaller then asks about C:\ProgramData\NearZero — your identity, paired clients, passwords and logs. It keeps them by default, so reinstalling later picks up where you left off. Tick “Also delete configuration, pairings and logs” if you want the machine genuinely clean; you’ll re-pair every client afterwards.

Next: pair a client.