We don’t provide anything to do this. You need some kind of browser runtime to launch those games. We don’t create stand-alone executables for HTML games, but run them directly inside of the itch.io’s app own browser runtime.
Viewing post in Launch HTML5 game through command-line?
No public API but you can explore what butlerd supports here:
- https://docs.itch.ovh/butlerd/master/#/?id=launch-client-request
- https://github.com/itchio/itch/blob/master/src/main/reactors/launch/perform-launch.ts
Note that this is an internal API. Although we likely aren’t changing it in the near future, we reserve the right to make changes without notice.
Running automatically that desktop issue.
If butler daemon and communication with it is required for launching games, that should do some itch application(or maybe even itch if that does not complicate so much and maybe patches are welcome) and try not have another user launcher with their own program communicating with butler(in docs there is saying only on windows?) and trying to guess where data are located and maybe be blocked by some itch development issue or progress or even operating system policy.
And butler also requires some info about launching with previous info get from it to post info how to launch it, so some desktop shortcuts seems cumbersome as program in the middle to have launcher for itch so bye bye common sense present in operating system... But if itch decide how to have this functionality then may be more desktop experience be in and also itch application have be the only point of itch development and user in.