WSL Hosts Updater
Windows service that automatically manages hosts entries for your Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) instance.
Features
- Lightweight Windows service
- Periodically checks your default WSL instance's status and IP
- Automatically updates
hostsentries with the instance's IP address - Keeps your hosts file clean and only ever adds one line per host
Installation
✅ Download the latest build from GitHub (or build from source if you prefer)
You can either run the program manually, or install it as a Windows Service. Either way, you'll need administrator permissions so the hosts file can be edited.
Service installation
Place the files in a permanent directory, then use sc on the command line to install the Windows service:
sc.exe create "WSLHostsUpdater" binpath="<SET_YOUR_INSTALL_PATH>\WSLHostsUpdater.exe" start=delayed-auto obj=<SET_YOUR_WINDOWS_ACCOUNT> password=<SET_YOUR_WINDOWS_PASSWORD>
After this, you'll be able to see and manage the service from the Windows Services view. Warnings and errors will appear in the event viewer with WSLHostsUpdater as source.
Configuration
You can modify appsettings.json (must be in the same directory as the executable) to configure some aspects of the service:
{
"Logging": {
"LogLevel": {
"Default": "Information",
"Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime": "Information"
}
},
"Service": {
"CheckWslRunning": true,
"UpdateInterval": 30000,
"Hostnames": ["host1.com", "host2.com"]
}
}| Key | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
CheckWslRunning |
If true, check if WSL is running first before attempting to refresh. | true |
UpdateInterval |
The amount of time in milliseconds between refreshes. | 30000 (30 seconds) |
Hostnames |
Array of host names to update in the hosts file. |
["wsl.local", "ubuntu.wsl"] |
🕑 The configuration file is hot reloaded automatically, so you can add hostnames whenever you like without having to restart the service.