A dedicated server manager for ARK: Survival Ascended. No setup. No wine to install. No .NET runtime to install.

⬇ Download · Website · Quick start · Build from source

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Download

Grab the archive for your OS from the latest release, unpack and run. The .NET runtime and wine are embedded — nothing else to install.

Platform	Architecture	Archive
macOS	Apple Silicon (arm64)	.zip
Linux	x64	.tar.gz
Windows	x64	.zip

First launch on macOS / Windows is gated by the OS because the app is not paid-signed:

• macOS — right-click → Open once (ad-hoc signed, not notarized). On Apple Silicon you may also see "support for Intel apps will be discontinued soon" (or a prompt to install Rosetta) the first time you start a server — that's expected: the ASA server is a Windows Intel binary run through bundled wine under Rosetta 2. Allow it and continue; Apple keeps Rosetta around for years yet.
• Windows — SmartScreen → More info → Run anyway (no Authenticode cert).

The ASA dedicated server itself is a Windows .exe — there is no native mac/linux build. On macOS / Linux ArkManager runs it through bundled wine (gcenx wine-stable / lutris-wine, SHA256-verified, no Homebrew / apt needed); on Windows it runs natively.

Features

• Install / update the server via SteamCMD (app id 2430930) — one click, progress streamed.
• Start / stop with live log, uptime / PID, auto-restart on crash, and a graceful RCON saveworld → DoExit shutdown before kill.
• RCON client (Source RCON / TCP) — one-click saveworld / DoExit / Broadcast, plus a live player counter on the Server tab.
• Config editor for GameUserSettings.ini / Game.ini — form view and raw tabs, auto-reloaded from disk when you switch tabs.
• Backups of ShooterGame/Saved/ — zip, rotation, and background auto-backups on an interval.
• Mods via CurseForge — paste IDs, names are resolved automatically (no API key needed).
• Cluster support — -ClusterId / -ClusterDirOverride with a folder picker.
• 7 map presets — TheIsland, TheCenter, ScorchedEarth, Aberration, Extinction, Astraeos, Ragnarok.

Screenshots — Install · RCON · Config · Mods · Backups

Quick start

1. Install → Install SteamCMD → Install server. The first run is slow (~25 GB). Until the server is installed, only the Install tab is shown; afterwards the full navigation unlocks.
2. Config → set Session name, Admin password, ports. Defaults are sensible, so you can start right away. RCON is on by default (port 27020).
3. Mods → paste CurseForge IDs (comma-separated) → Add. Names resolve when the tab opens.
4. Server → ▶ Start. The very first launch spends ~30s letting wine build its prefix, then ASA loads the world.
5. Backups → Create, or enable auto-backup every N minutes (only ticks while Running).

Build from source

Requires the .NET 10 SDK. The solution is ArkManager.slnx (the .NET 10 XML format).

git clone https://github.com/DiFuks/ark-manager.git
cd ark-manager

# dev iteration
dotnet build ArkManager.slnx
dotnet test  ArkManager.slnx
dotnet run --project src/ArkManager.Desktop/ArkManager.App.csproj

# production bundles for all 3 platforms (from a single mac/linux host)
./build.sh                     # mac + linux + win
./build.sh --target macos      # single target
make mac / make linux / make windows
make run                       # open the built .app from dist/
make clean

Running via dotnet run (no bundle): BundledWineLauncher looks for wine in ARKMANAGER_WINE_PATH, then inside the bundle, then in the build cache ~/.cache/ark-manager/wine/<sha>/.../bin/. So once you've run ./build.sh once, wine is on disk and dotnet run finds it automatically — no env var needed.

Architecture, invariants and gotchas live in CLAUDE.md.

Tests

dotnet test ArkManager.slnx

xUnit, no mocking frameworks — pure-logic units only. Cover: IniFile round-trip, ServerCommandLine.Build (passwords / RCON deliberately kept out of the URL), SteamCMD parsers (appmanifest_*.acf + app_info_print), the bootstrap URL helper, and PlayerPoller.

Tech stack

.NET 10 · Avalonia 12 · CommunityToolkit.Mvvm · self-contained publish with embedded wine on macOS/Linux.

Intentionally out of scope

• Multi-instance UI (the Profiles model exists, the GUI drives only the first one).
• CurseForge browser / search (only ID → name resolution).
• GUI i18n — the UI is English only.
• AppImage / .dmg / native installers — only .zip / .tar.gz.
• Code signing / notarization — ad-hoc on macOS only.
• Headless CLI — GUI only.
• ARM64 Linux, Intel Mac — untested.

Help & bug reports

Hit any snag — install, launch, wine, RCON, anything? Open an issue describing what happened and attach the log. Grab it from the Open logs button on the Install tab (it opens <DataDir>/logs/; attach the newest arkmanager-*.log — one file per app run holds the server console plus install/backup/crash diagnostics).

License

ArkManager is released under the MIT License.

Bundled wine (LGPL-2.1)

ArkManager bundles Wine (gcenx macOS builds, lutris-wine Linux builds) — pinned versions + SHA256 in build/wine-sources.json. Wine is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1.

ArkManager itself stays MIT — LGPL is weak copyleft, and wine is run as a separate process (not linked into the app), living in a replaceable wine/ folder. Each macOS / Linux bundle ships wine/COPYING.LGPL-2.1 (the license text) and wine/NOTICE.wine (attribution + links to the corresponding wine source for that exact build), so the distributed binaries satisfy LGPL-2.1. You may swap the wine/ folder for your own build.

Bundled fonts (OFL-1.1)

The UI embeds IBM Plex (© IBM Corp.) and Zilla Slab (© The Mozilla Foundation), both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. Every bundle ships THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt plus the font license texts (IBMPlex-OFL.txt, ZillaSlab-OFL.txt). License sources live in build/licenses/.