NetGuard - no-root firewall

Marcel Bokhorst, FairCode BV

In-app purchases

About this app

NetGuard is an internet security app, which offers simple and advanced ways to restrict apps' access to the internet.

Applications and addresses can individually be allowed or denied access to your Wi-Fi and/or mobile connection. Root permissions are not required.

Blocking access to the internet can help:

• reduce your data usage
• save your battery
• increase your privacy

Features:

• Simple to use
• No root required
• 100% open source
• No calling home
• No tracking or analytics
• No advertisements
• Actively developed and supported
• Android 5.1 and later supported
• IPv4/IPv6 TCP/UDP supported
• Tethering supported
• Optionally allow when screen on
• Optionally block when roaming
• Optionally block system applications
• Optionally notify when an application accesses the internet
• Optionally record network usage per application per address
• Material design theme with light and dark theme

PRO features:

• Log all outgoing traffic; search and filter access attempts; export PCAP files to analyze traffic
• Allow/block individual addresses per application
• New application notifications; configure NetGuard directly from the notification
• Display network speed graph in a status bar notification
• Select from five additional themes in both light and dark version

There is no other no-root firewall offering all these features.

If you like to test new features, you can participate in the test program: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/eu.faircode.netguard

All required permissions are described here: https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/blob/master/FAQ.md#user-content-faq42

NetGuard uses the Android VPNService to route traffic to itself, so it can be filtered on-device instead of on a server. Only one app can use this service at the same time, which is a limitation of Android.

The full source code is available here: https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard

Ratings and reviews

This is a great and valuable app. I use my phone with a pre paid card and I just don't want apps to download updates via my service provider. Even though I can control mobile data through phone settings having this app gives more peace of mind. There are a lot of apps who silently get in contact with the company who developed them. Netguard blocks them right away after installation. And if a program needs internet access to work properly I don't want to have it on my phone apart from exceptions

App for people with brain... Works great. Blocking all (system/user) apps from accessing the internet and let me know who they were trying to reach. This app doesn't show any ads. Doesn't send any data to any server. You can use adblocking feature, can verify hosts using ping command. This is an application to protect your privacy and for which the developer receives death threats, so it really works!!

works great... for about 10 minutes until it disables itself, I use it to block games from connecting, due to the absurd amount of ads, and this firewall stops working after like 10 minutes, yes battery optimization is disabled, I did everything the app suggested during setup, it used to be perfect, but now it's next to useless because it turns itself off, would be 5 stars otherwise, if that behavior stops in a future update, I'll update my review edit: I have 16GB of RAM, plenty to work with

What’s new

* Reduced number of reloads
* Small improvements
* Updated build tools