---
title: "Launcher (ffxivlauncher.exe)"
---

{{< note "This documentation is incomplete." >}}

This is the program that logins into the official servers and launches the game.

# History

There are two different versions of the launcher, one "old" and one "new".

![The old launcher design](ffxivlauncher-old.png)

![The new launcher design](ffxivlauncher-new.png)

The old launcher has been there since launch, but was on the path to be retired since the new launcher design was used. It seems as of Patch 6.5, the old launcher can no longer be used and all users must use the new design.

# Internals

The launcher is actually a website, and the launcher is served by the [Frontier server]({{< ref "/server/frontier" >}}) on URLs such as https://frontier.ffxiv.com/version_4_0_win/index.html?1559390056785.

In order for the launcher to actually launch anything useful, it uses JavaScript callbacks into native code.

For details on how logging into the Square Enix servers work, see the [relevant page on this concept]({{< ref "/concept/logging-in-official" >}}).

# Arguments

{{< note "Like the other executables, it requires you to pass these using the [SqexArg](concept/sqexarg) format." >}}

- ExecuteArg (**Required**)
    - This is a strange argument. This appears to be a random gibberish of numbers:

    `/T =1000000 /ExecuteArg =14431503 /UserPath =C:/users/yourname/Documents/My  Games/FINAL  FANTASY  XIV  -  A  Realm  Reborn`

    In reality, decompiling the launcher reveals that they are sprintf'ing in this format:

    `%02d%02d%02d%02d`

    - 1st arg - current month + 1
    - 2nd arg - current day
    - 3rd arg - current hour
    - 4th arg - current minute

- UserPath
    - Your usual path to your FFXIV data folder in Documents.

# Alternative Implementations

* [Astra (C++)](https://sr.ht/~redstrate/astra/)
* [XIVQuickLauncher (C#)](https://github.com/goatcorp/FFXIVQuickLauncher)
* [XIVCore (C#)](https://github.com/goatcorp/XIVLauncher.Core)
* [XIV-on-Mac (Swift)](https://github.com/marzent/XIV-on-Mac)
* [microlaunch (Rust)](https://github.com/eorzeatools/microlaunch)
* [L4-cpp (C++)](https://github.com/WorkingRobot/L4-cpp)