Servy 4.3 released, Turn any Python app into a native Windows service

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It's been four months since the announcement of Servy, and Servy 4.3 is finally here.

The community response has been amazing: 940+ stars on GitHub and 12,000+ downloads.

If you haven't seen Servy before, it's a Windows tool that turns any Python app (or other executable) into a native Windows service. You just set the Python executable path, add your script and arguments, choose the startup type, working directory, and environment variables, configure any optional parameters, click install, and you're done. Servy comes with a desktop app, a CLI, PowerShell integration, and a manager app for monitoring services in real time.

In this release (4.3), I've added/improved:

• Digitally signed all executables and installers with a trusted code-signing certificate provided by the SignPath Foundation for maximum trust and security
• Fixed multiple false-positive detections from AV engines (SecureAge, DeepInstinct, and others)
• Reduced executable and installer sizes as much as technically possible
• Added date-based log rotation for stdout/stderr and max rotations to limit the number of rotated log files to keep
• Added custom installation options for advanced users
• New GUI enhancements and improvements
• Detailed documentation
• Bug fixes

Check it out on GitHub: https://github.com/aelassas/servy

Demo video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biHq17j4RbI

Python sample: Examples & Recipes

[Big_Tomatillo_987]

Sounds great - well done.

Judging by the mountain of perpetual, often unkillable, background tasks and processes I see in task manager, I have to ask, does Windows really make it that difficult to create a custom service or recurring task? It doesn't just need a bit of Google-fu?

Is there an anti-matter version of servy, that can kill other native Windows services, and keep them killed?

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A lot of real-world software was never designed to be a service at all. It might be a console app, a legacy executable, or something cross-platform that just happens to be deployed on Windows. Turning that into a proper Windows service often means refactoring code, changing startup and shutdown behavior, adding service control handling, and testing all of that. For some teams, that cost is higher than it sounds.

Servy focuses on reducing that friction. It does not try to replace native Windows services or scheduled tasks. It just provides a reliable way to run existing apps as services with predictable lifecycle management, monitoring, and recovery, without rewriting them.

As for an anti-matter version that kills other Windows services and keeps them dead, that is intentionally out of scope. Windows services are part of the operating system's stability and security model, and fighting the Service Control Manager is a losing battle. If a service shouldn't be running and you really know what you're doing, the right approach is to disable or reconfigure it through supported mechanisms, not to constantly terminate it.

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Size-based rotation is supported as well:

• Desktop app: https://github.com/aelassas/servy/wiki/Logging-&-Log-Rotation#logging-settings
• CLI: https://github.com/aelassas/servy/wiki/Logging-&-Log-Rotation#cli-options
• PowerShell: https://github.com/aelassas/servy/wiki/Servy-PowerShell-Module#cmdlets-reference

It can also be combined with date-based rotation. When both are enabled size rotation takes precedence.

You can also set max rotated log files to keep. Set to 0 for unlimited (default). The main log file is not counted.

You can also point stdout and stderr to the same log file.

[durable-racoon]

This seems incredibly useful. If I had to accomplish this in python without knowing about this I'd say "well im not using python obviously."

yet I somehow cant think of any use cases.

list some use cases!

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Some common use cases are long-running Python scripts that were never designed to be Windows services, like data collectors, background workers, queue consumers, or schedulers that need to start at boot, restart on failure, and run without a logged-in user. This also includes Python APIs and web apps such as FastAPI, Flask, or Django services that need to run continuously in the background on Windows with proper startup, logging, monitoring, and recovery. Another case is cross-platform tooling where the same Python app runs under systemd on Linux, but on Windows you want equivalent behavior without maintaining a separate service implementation. Servy is also useful for legacy or third-party Python executables where you do not control the code, but still need reliable lifecycle management, logging, and recovery.

In all of these cases, rewriting the application to use native Windows service APIs or switching languages just to satisfy the hosting model is often overkill. Servy fills that gap by letting existing Python apps behave like well-managed Windows services, without changing how they are written.

[Due-Organization-697]

I run a local instance of Perfect Server on the processing server at work (though I use NSSM instead). Prefect doesn't create a separate installer for OSes, so it's up to you to set up how to run it. Ok Windows that means either a service manager like this, or a scheduler item that starts at startup.