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Network Discovery | Getting Started

Find things on the local network and advertise your own, across the three protocols consumer and commercial hardware actually uses: mDNS/DNS-SD (Bonjour/Zeroconf), SSDP/UPnP, and WS-Discovery. Discover printers, casting targets, IoT devices, routers, media servers, ONVIF cameras, and other instances of your own app. Built on Shiny.Core, so it runs in any Shiny host — MAUI, console, service, or server.
GitHub GitHub stars for shinyorg/shiny
Downloads NuGet downloads for Shiny.Net.Discovery
Frameworks
.NET MAUI
.NET
Operating Systems
Android
iOS
Windows
Linux
macOS

Which protocol?

Section titled “Which protocol?”

Register only what you need — they are independent, and a device that speaks one usually does not speak the others.

Looking for Protocol Register Docs
Apple devices, AirPlay, IPP printers, peer apps, your own services mDNS/DNS-SD AddMdns() Browsing · Publishing
Routers, UPnP/DLNA media servers, Sonos, Roku, smart TVs SSDP/UPnP AddSsdp() SSDP & UPnP
ONVIF IP cameras, WSD printers and scanners, Windows machines WS-Discovery AddWsDiscovery() WS-Discovery & ONVIF

Features

Section titled “Features”
  • Browse — a live IAsyncEnumerable<> stream of things appearing and disappearing, or a one-shot scan, for all three protocols.
  • Resolve — turn an mDNS instance name into a host, port, IPv4/IPv6 addresses, and TXT records.
  • Publish — advertise your own mDNS service, UPnP root device, or WS-Discovery target.
  • UPnP device descriptions — fetch and parse friendly name, model, icons, and the service list.
  • No iOS multicast entitlement for mDNS — Apple platforms go through Bonjour (NSNetService), not raw multicast sockets. SSDP and WS-Discovery do need it; see Platform Setup.
  • No Android multicast lock to manage — mDNS goes through NsdManager, and the lock SSDP/WS-Discovery need is acquired for you.
  • Actionable permission errors — a missing entitlement or manifest entry throws DiscoveryPermissionException naming what to add, instead of silently finding nothing.
  • Dependency-free managed implementations, no Avahi and no third-party stack.
  • AOT & trimmer compatible.

Step 1 — Add the marketplace:

claude plugin marketplace add shinyorg/skills

Step 2 — Install the plugin:

claude plugin install shiny@shiny

One plugin installs all 35 Shiny skills. Your agent loads only the skill relevant to what you're building, so there's no cost to having them all available.

Step 1 — Add the marketplace:

copilot plugin marketplace add https://github.com/shinyorg/skills

Step 2 — Install the plugin:

copilot plugin install shiny@shiny

One plugin installs all 35 Shiny skills. Your agent loads only the skill relevant to what you're building, so there's no cost to having them all available.

View shiny-discovery Skill

Setup

Section titled “Setup”
Shiny.Net.DiscoveryNuGet package Shiny.Net.Discovery

Install the package:

Terminal window
dotnet add package Shiny.Net.Discovery

Register the manager:

using Shiny;


builder.Services.AddMdns();          // IMdnsManager
builder.Services.AddSsdp();          // ISsdpManager
builder.Services.AddWsDiscovery();   // IWsDiscoveryManager

Then inject the manager you need.

Find services on the network

Section titled “Find services on the network”
public class PrinterFinder(IMdnsManager mdns)
{
    public async Task<IReadOnlyList<MdnsService>> FindPrinters(CancellationToken ct)
        => await mdns.BrowseOnce("_ipp._tcp", TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5), ct);
}

BrowseOnce collects for a fixed window and returns everything still present when it closes — ideal for a “scan” button. For a list that updates as devices come and go, use the streaming API:

await foreach (var result in mdns.Browse("_ipp._tcp", ct))
{
    if (result.Status == MdnsBrowseStatus.Found)
        this.printers[result.Service.FullName] = result.Service;
    else
        this.printers.Remove(result.Service.FullName);
}

Browse never completes on its own — it runs until the CancellationToken is cancelled.

Use what you found

Section titled “Use what you found”
var service = found.First();


Console.WriteLine(service.InstanceName);          // "Kitchen Printer"
Console.WriteLine(service.HostName);              // "kitchen-printer.local"
Console.WriteLine(service.Port);                  // 631
Console.WriteLine(service.GetTxt("rp"));          // TXT record lookup


if (service.IsResolved)
    await socket.ConnectAsync(service.GetEndPoint()!);
Section titled “Advertise your own service”
await using var publication = await mdns.Publish(
    new MdnsServiceRegistration("Allan's Laptop", "_myapp._tcp", 8080)
    {
        TxtRecords = new Dictionary<string, string> { ["version"] = "2" }
    },
    ct
);


// the responder renames on conflict, so read the live name back
logger.LogInformation("advertising as {Name}", publication.InstanceName);

Publishing only advertises the port — you are still responsible for having a listener bound to it. Disposing the publication sends a goodbye packet and stops advertising.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”