Discord AutoRPC

Automatic Discord Rich Presence for any Windows app or game.

Real 256×256 icons, contextual activity lines, and a timer that ticks — with nothing to configure inside Discord.

Discord AutoRPC lives in the system tray and watches your foreground window. When the active app changes it extracts the application's own icon, composes a short contextual line for it, and publishes both to your Discord profile — at most one update every 15 seconds, so the timer on your profile keeps ticking smoothly.

Note

Open beta (v0.1.0-beta). Rough edges are expected. Bugs, questions and tagline requests are welcome in Issues.

Features

• Any app or game, automatically. Whatever executable has focus gets broadcast — there is no per-game setup in Discord.
• Native 256×256 icons. Extracted from the binary itself with Windows' PrivateExtractIconsW, not scaled up from a thumbnail.
• Contextual taglines. The second line is built from the window title — browsers get Surfing the internet, documents Working on a document, editors Working on a project.
• A timer that keeps ticking. The presence is sent once and left alone, so the counter on your profile advances every second instead of resetting with each update.
• Private browsing stays private. Incognito and private windows across Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Brave, Zen and friends are masked, never broadcast.
• Lifecycle aware. When the Discord client exits, AutoRPC stops broadcasting and hides its tray icon, then restores both when Discord is back (configurable via auto_close_with_discord).
• Settings, not JSON. A first-run wizard opens the Discord Developer Portal and validates your Application ID; after that everything — taglines, overrides, the ignore list, timing — is a few clicks in the settings window.

Install

Prebuilt (recommended)

No Python required.

1. Download DiscordAutoRPC-v0.1.0-beta-windows-x64.zip (or the bare DiscordAutoRPC.exe) from Releases.
2. Run DiscordAutoRPC.exe. The setup wizard starts on first launch:
   • Click Open Discord Developer Portal, create a new application (any name), and copy its Application ID.
   • Paste it into the wizard and choose Save & Launch AutoRPC.
3. That's it — AutoRPC waits in the tray. Open any app and check your Discord profile.

From source

Windows 10/11 (64-bit), Python 3.11+, and the Discord desktop client running.

git clone https://github.com/yashkthakor/Discord-AutoRPC.git
cd Discord-AutoRPC
pip install -r requirements.txt

python main.py             # run it
pythonw main.py --startup  # or, without a console window

To build the standalone executable:

pip install pyinstaller
python -m PyInstaller --noconsole --onefile --icon="assets/icon.ico" --name="DiscordAutoRPC" main.py

The result lands in dist/. Releases are built by CI from a v* tag.

Configuration

config.json sits next to the executable in portable mode (a portable.txt or an existing config.json beside it) and in %APPDATA%\DiscordAutoRPC\ otherwise. Everything in it is editable from Settings; a ready-to-edit template ships as config.example.json.

Key	Default	Purpose
application_id	""	Your Discord application ID. Required.
poll_interval	5	Seconds between foreground checks.
debounce_seconds	10	Focus time an app needs before it is broadcast.
idle_timeout_seconds	60	Clear the presence after this much inactivity.
default_icon_url	Discord's default avatar	Fallback icon when extraction fails.
auto_close_with_discord	true	Go dormant while the Discord client is closed.
mask_private_browsing	true	Never broadcast incognito/private windows.
whitelist_only	false	Broadcast only what is in whitelist.
whitelist	[]	Executable names, used when whitelist_only is on.
ignored_exes	system shells and Explorer	Executable names that are never broadcast.
taglines	built-in table	Static second line per executable.
overrides	{}	Per-executable name / tagline / icon_url that wins over everything.
steamgriddb_api_key	""	Optional SteamGridDB key for game icons.
upload_host	"freeimage"	Icon upload host: freeimage or catbox.
enable_dynamic_taglines	true	Build the second line from the window title.

For example, giving one game a custom name, line and icon:

"overrides": {
  "example_game.exe": {
    "name": "My Cool Game",
    "tagline": "Playing a custom game",
    "icon_url": "https://example.com/icon.png"
  }
}

Icons are extracted locally and uploaded to the chosen host over HTTPS, because Discord needs a URL for them; the results are cached in icon_cache.json. No raw window titles or file paths are uploaded anywhere.

Tray menu

Item	Action
Discord AutoRPC v0.1.0-beta	Version marker; becomes an update notice (opens the release page) when a newer release exists.
Settings	The configuration window.
Rename Active App…	Rename / re-tag whatever is focused right now.
Pause / Resume	Stop broadcasting for a while.
Ignore current app	Add the focused app to ignored_exes.
Open log	Open autorpc.log.
Quit	Clear the presence and exit.

How it works

• The foreground window is polled every poll_interval seconds, then filtered through the ignore list, the whitelist, private-browsing detection and a debounce window.
• Display names come from the executable's version information; the tagline comes from parsing the window title (context.py).
• Icons are extracted at 256×256, cached to disk, and uploaded once per app.
• The presence payload is deduplicated and rate-limited to one update every 15 seconds — which is what keeps the timer on your profile honest.

This engine is also driven headlessly by the next-generation UI under desktop/ (Tauri 2 + React, in development); see GUI_HANDOFF_TAURI_REACT.md.

Contributing

Bug reports, feature requests and pull requests are all welcome.

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a branch (git checkout -b feature/my-change).
3. Commit and push it.
4. Open a pull request.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.