One-Click WSL Management: Dashboard v0.9.1 Adds Disk Shrink, Port Forwarding, USB Passthrough

What is WSL Dashboard?

WSL Dashboard is an open‑source (GPL‑3.0) graphical manager for WSL instances, written in Rust with Slint and Skia. It provides one‑click buttons for common WSL tasks such as launch, stop, migrate, compress, port forwarding and USB passthrough.

Core Features

Instance Management

One‑click start/stop/terminate/logout – four colored buttons.

Real‑time status monitoring – shows Running or Stopped.

Set default distro – avoids repeated wsl -d calls.

IP address display – shows the instance IP.

Disk Shrink

Fast VHDX compression – clears system cache, shows progress bar, reclaims physical space.

Full VHDX rebuild – more thorough compression for maximum space savings.

Sparse VHD mode – on‑demand allocation; a 50 GB nominal VHDX may occupy ~10 GB.

Sparse mode is automatically enabled for newly installed or cloned distros; older instances require manual activation.

Network Management

Port forwarding – automatically creates Windows firewall rules and can activate on boot.

HTTP proxy configuration – global proxy for unified connections.

USB Passthrough

Bind USB device – one‑click assignment to WSL.

Connect/Disconnect – graphical control without commands.

Auto‑share on boot – persistent device availability.

Distro Installation

Microsoft Store – opens the store page.

GitHub / Mirror – selects the fastest mirror (including domestic mirrors), downloads, verifies and installs automatically.

Local file – imports RootFS or VHDX files.

Online image – latency test selects the optimal download source.

Quick Integration

One‑click terminal – prefers Windows Terminal.

One‑click VS Code – opens directly in the WSL work directory.

One‑click file explorer – opens \\wsl$ path.

Startup script hook – runs custom scripts when WSL starts.

Performance

System‑tray (silent) mode: ~10 MB memory.

Window mode (English UI): ~18 MB memory.

Window mode (Chinese UI, large fonts): ~38 MB memory.

For reference, a Chrome tab consumes ~100 MB and VS Code ~300 MB.

Installation

WinGet (simplest)

winget install Owu.WSLDashboard

Installer / Portable

Download WSLDashboard.0.9.1.Setup.x64.exe (installer) or WSLDashboard.0.9.1.Portable.x64.zip (portable) from GitHub Releases.

Portable version is a single 9.1 MB executable.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/owu/wsl-dashboard.git
cd wsl-dashboard
cargo run

Requires Rust 1.92+ toolchain.

Practical Scenarios

Scenario 1 – Compress VHDX on a full C: drive

1. Open WSL Dashboard → select Ubuntu instance
2. Click “Compress” → choose “Fast” or “Full Rebuild"
3. Wait for progress bar → view reclaimed space

A 30 GB VHDX may shrink to ~15 GB.

Scenario 2 – Expose a WSL web service to Windows

1. Open WSL Dashboard → Network Management → Port Forwarding
2. Add rule: WSL port 3000 → Windows port 3000
3. Firewall rule is created automatically → other LAN devices can access

Scenario 3 – USB device passthrough

1. Plug in USB device (e.g., dev board, camera)
2. Open WSL Dashboard → USB Management
3. Select device → click “Bind and Connect"
4. Inside WSL, lsusb shows the device

Configuration Overview

Default install directory – location for new WSL instances.

Log level – Error / Warn / Info / Debug / Trace.

UI language – 50+ languages, including Simplified Chinese.

Dark mode – On / Off / Follow system.

Auto‑close WSL on exit – optionally shut down all instances when the dashboard exits.

Start on boot – launch with Windows, optionally stay silent in the tray.

Close button behavior – minimize to tray instead of exiting.

Sidebar customization – hide or show specific feature tabs.

Security Notice

WSL Dashboard is not distributed via Microsoft Store. Any app named “WSL Dashboard” in the store is counterfeit and should not be downloaded. Official releases are only on GitHub Releases and WinGet.

Metadata

Name: WSL Dashboard

Version: v0.9.1 (2026‑06‑20)

License: GPL‑3.0

Language: Rust + Slint + Skia

Memory footprint: 10 MB (tray) / 18 MB (English window) / 38 MB (Chinese window)

GitHub:

https://github.com/owu/wsl-dashboard.git