leonletto/localhost-app-launcher

An Application to allow launching apps from a web based App Catalog or an agent like Workspace ONE Hub

localhost-app-launcher

A system utility for Streamlined Application Launching from Workspace ONE Hub and the Workspace ONE Access App Catalog.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Features
• Usage
• Deployment
  • Dependencies
  • Certificates
  • Configuration Sensor
  • Installing LHLauncher
• Contact

Introduction

Workspace ONE Hub centralizes enterprise applications. LHLauncher expands its capabilities by allowing you to launch local applications from a URL, similar to SaaS applications. Integrated with Workspace ONE Hub, LHLauncher offers a secure and efficient way to manage and launch locally installed applications.

Features

• Dynamic Configuration: Reads configuration from the Windows Registry.
• Process Verification: Ensures the application's process is active.
• Retries: Automatically retries if the application doesn't start.
• Logging: Includes a logging feature for easier troubleshooting.
• Security: Uses a certificate published by you, which you configure for trust, so that all interactions are via SSL using your trusted certificates. It is hardcoded to listen only on 127.0.0.1.

Usage

A Practical Example with Notepad.exe

To configure LHLauncher for Notepad.exe:

1. Create a registry entry for Notepad.
2. Add a Web clip in Workspace ONE UEM or Access to point to https://localhost.com/notepad.

Documentation

For more information, see the documentation.

Deployment

Dependencies

LHLauncher is built with .NET runtime 6.0.21. Download it from Microsoft.

Certificates

Deploy your root CA certificate as a device profile and the Web server Certificate as a user profile. The Web server certificate should have localhost.com as the subject and localhost in the SAN for ease of deploying.

Configuration Sensor

Deploy the configuration Sensor to add the required registry entries. This will also modify the windows hosts file to ensure localhost.com points to localhost at 127.0.0.1.

Installing LHLauncher

Deploy the LHLauncher.msi as a standard MSI application. Add the .NET Windows Desktop Runtime as a dependency.

Whats Next

Working on making the application more robust and secure:

• Adding Certificate chacking and other security features.
• Adding more try/catch with logging to make the application more robust.

Contact

For questions or requests, contact Leon Letto at VMware – lettol@vmware.com.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License – see the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

To contribute to this project, please open a pull request. We welcome contributions from the community.