yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Apps and Games] FFW:
No, it was one of his visitors, not the master himself. By the way - as long as your software follows the european logic of "privacy" (which it seems to do form what I can tell) it does not matter at all if you are European or not.

Yes, the new app list is indeed much better! Looks a bit netguard-y ;)

Just two questions about this:

1. why is it impossible to edit DNS or Firewall if I RethinkDNS is not active? I am still switching between Netguard and RethinkDNS and I would like to be able to edit the blocked/allowed apps before I activate RethinkDNS

2. Since RethinkDNS is also limited by Android App IDs, I miss the possibility to either group/sort apps by App ID (as AfWall+ does it) or to at least search for the App ID as Netguard allows.

That's quite simple: App ID "0" means "Apps run with administrator rights" for Android and Admin is called "Root" for Linux and Android, so both AfWall+ and Netguard call this App ID "Root". But this is a downside of RethinkDNS then: if I understand you correctly, it cannot block these apps at all. Understandable since you definitely need to know what you do if you want to limit these - but a downside nevertheless.

This is good to hear :-) I would however also vote to add some kind of auto update for the blocklists.

Please do not let such assh***s come close to you. But I really wonder (as I do in the case of Netguard) how many of these haters might be paid by marketing companies who do not like such apps at all. With PiHole at home and Netguard or RethinkDNS on my phone, I rarely see any ads at all - and I ****love**** it.

From my point of view, RethinkDNS seems a viable Alternative to NetGuard - with the main drawbacks that

- you are limited to the provided blocklists that also don't auto-update since it seems you have a large monolithic blocklist file

- you cannot block anything running with App ID 0

But: your app is new, and you are working on it and enhancing it with every release.

And there is a chance you implement Wireguard which would enable a user to use your firewall and then forward the traffic to his VPN without a rooted device - and as soon as that happens I think RethinkDNS really is a leap forward.
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Gotcha. I don't expect the master to review us, though.

That's because we do a bunch of "reactive" stuff when rules change (like re-hydrate the firewall-rules cache, for example). And if the firewall / dns isn't active, these reactive changes may result in unexpected behaviour (including app crashes). In short, the limitation is with the code base, as it is setup currently. We would have to untangle and fight with it to let users add rules when the app is inactive. I'd rather we spend whatever time we have on other important feature requests. So: I wouldn't expect this to get done anytime soon.

Besides, the way I envision it, Rethink is not meant to be used in intervals; it is meant to be used as an Always-on VPN.

You understood what I said incorrectly. Rethink can (and does) absolutely block UID 0 (aka root) if its traffic happens to tunnel over Rethink's local-VPN. The thing with root is, it can easily bypass such a restriction (since it is root!). NetGuard cannot prevent it either. May be, AfWall+ (needs a clever implementation) does; not sure.

It is rote work to do auto-updates, but we're thinking about it: https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/564

Nah, don't think that's the case. Unlike NetGuard, Rethink has a very, very tiny userbase. Probably like 100x smaller. The haters are more likely because they are unable to communicate their criticism without expressing extreme emotion.

Yeah, but we want to add ability to let users point Rethink to any blocklist. Coming in probably 3 months or so: https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/237

Rethink can.

I had this impl in March, but we never get around to releasing it. May be this December in we do!

Btw, thanks for your feedback. Appreciate it :)
[Android Apps and Games] gemlion:
I am a little bit stuck here. Had to reinstall RethinkDNS app while Always-On VPN was active. Due uninstalling the VPN profile was gone. But now RethinkDNS thinks the profile is still there and active. I cannot start RethinkDNS and get the error "Always-On VPN active. Do you really want to stop?" or something like that.

Any idea how to solve this and start the connection?

Best regards and thanks for this great app/service.
[Android Apps and Games] celestialspring:
Try their telegram group for more responses.
[Android Apps and Games] y0himba:
Just got a Pixel 7 Pro with Android 13. I am having an issue where I cannot turn on the notifications for RethinkDNS.

At your request android is blocking this app's notifications from appearing on this device

The toggle for turning them back on is greyed out and will not work. I cleared the app's cache and storage, rebooted, then reinstalled the app, rebooted. Still unable to use the notification to pause/start RethinkDNS.

I think this is the culprit:

https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/notifications/notification-permission

More here: https://www.singular.net/blog/android-13-push-notifications/

It's not only RethinkDNS experiencing this issue, but a LOT of other apps as well.
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Thanks for the bug report. We've since fixed it this issue in v053l: https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/594

That's a strange bug. I don't think the app is at fault. Which Android version are you on? Are you on a custom ROM or stock OEM ROM? Did reboot not fix this issue?
[Android Apps and Games] pyereciae2788:
I've been using ReThinkDNS for some time, and just happened to stumble upon this XDA thread. It's pretty reliable, although I'd say an important missing piece is custom blacklists/whitelists. Looking forward to when custom lists are added, since those will definitely be useful.

Also, by any chance, are emails checked? In the Support section of the FAQ (https://rethinkdns.com/faq#faq-support), an email address is linked, which I'm assuming is an alternative contact method for those who don't use Telegram. I'm not sure about the situation, though, since I've sent an email to there a long time ago with no repsonse.
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Hi there, we do check emails and reply when necessary (for example, we may not reply if we have since fixed the bug, or there might already be a discussion or issue about it on Github, or the FAQ covers it, or the email is scant on the details of the bug, and so on). I know it is frustrating to send emails into a blackhole, but if you'd see our inbox, you'd understand just why we possibly can't reply to every email we get (:

Support is always the fastest on Telegram since a plenty community members are up-to-date with the state of the development, planned changes, existing bugs, and functionality of the app.
[Android Apps and Games] lenny64:
@ignoramous

How can I set up a specific DNS in the app for my home wifi?

If it's not yet possible, then maybe as a new feature?

For example, it should use my local DNS (pihole) when I am conneted to my home wifi (ssid). For everything else use a different DNS server.
[Android Apps and Games] ZxPyP:
@ignoramous

When I use RethinkDNS apps I quit, automatically launch again(like Firefox, Youtube, Conversations and so on). When I use Netguard, the manually terminated apps stay closed.

Do you have any idea why the system behaves this way with RethinkDNS?
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Hi there

Not possible yet. This is a very niche use case, so we intend to implement it once we get other majors asks out of the way: https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/445

We do want to integrate Tasker which would make it automatable: https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/63
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
No clue. But the behaviour you describe is the first I have heard of it. Can you share a screen recording, if you're comfortable? Also, make sure the ROM / Android version you're using doesn't have bugs in them.

v054 is the latest rdns version, btw. Is that the one you're using?
[Android Apps and Games] donjoe0:
IDK, the uBlock author says the performance penalty is negligible.

https://github.com/mtxadmin/ublock/blob/master/docs/hosts_file_performance_en.mdNope, some testing immediately confirmed for me a large hosts file produces visible connection slowdown.

And speaking of performance, @ignoramous I just read today that the AFWall+ firewall solution of using iptables has very low processing demand and battery drain. Are you forced to do it some other way in RDNS, maybe because of the configurability you want to offer, and is that why there's significant extra battery drain from your firewall? Because right now I'm thinking the optimal combination for me would be to use AFWall+ in tandem with DNS-only RDNS to get the juiciest part of RDNS working with a perfectly fine firewall for no visible battery sacrifice.
[Android Apps and Games] ZxPyP:
I am currently using Netguard again because I noticed this bevavior with RethinkDNS.

As a long-time Netguard user, I found the behavior a bit odd. No future for Netguard, because it is no longer actively developed further. I hope RethinkDNS runs better on my smartphone in the future.

Unfortunately I can't test much at the moment, but when I have time I can open a bug report about it on github.com.

Maybe I can test it this weekend.

The problem occurred on two Samsung A52 4G, Android 13 February Security-Patch. RethinkDNS 054a from Google Play Store.
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
That's the latest and greatest. Expect v054b in a week or so.

Rethink doesn't start apps, so what you're reporting is all a bit strange. Whenever you get time, consider sharing a screengrab of the issue.

Re: NetGuard: No updates but it is solid even with some flaws. It also powers DuckDuckGo's App Protection on Android. So I doubt it will be abandoned or at least, will live on in DuckDuckGo's app.
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Depends on the implementation. Some programs are just poorly written in how they handle large host files, which is what eventually results in higher resource consumption.

Rdns works without root. And our priority is in fact this non-root usecase, as I am firmly in the camp that believes root adds more security troubles than its worth.

We may yet add an AfWall-like firewall that leverages root, but it isn't going to happen in the next 4 months or so, as there are many other bugs / features (WireGuard VPN, Android TV support, firewall analytics) that we think are more important.

Battery drain is a function of how much data is being pumped through rdns, as rdns has to inspect every packet flowing through it. The drain sometimes may seem a bit too much but it should really stem from use of any other active app and not rdns itself (that is, rdns on its own shouldn't be draining battery at all, it should mostly just idle out when not in use).
[Android Apps and Games] donjoe0:
Probably right, I just added a 300k hosts file from uBlock to my AdAway yesterday, where before I was only using 10k entries, and I saw visible slowdowns of all browser connections. Definitely not the greatest solution to be running all that activity client-side on a phone. Could be a trivial speed impact on a PC, but on a phone it really does look pretty bad, and that was just one large list I added. (Also didn't even realize RDNS Plus already had a uBlock-sourced blocklist included, as well as an AdAway list.)

Ah, that explains it then. Yeah, I have this setup I've become used to for years now, based on LineageOS and all kinds of root-enabled customizations, but I've been realizing I may have been running a swiss cheese security setup here all along, after I discovered GrapheneOS last week and started reading about its philosophy etc.

Oh right, my bad. Then I just need to compare more carefully, like look at browser+RDNS&F vs. browser+AdAway+AFWall+, so I'm comparing oranges to oranges. :P
[Android Apps and Games] ZxPyP:
Yes it was really a bit strange.

I have now used RethinkDNS again since yesterday and so far the behavior has not occurred.

Possibly the problem was with Samsung, they have a lot of weird apps preinstalled.

Thanks for your help. If anything happens again I'll get back to you.
[Android Apps and Games] illetyus:
Used it for 10 minutes and worked well. Thank you
[Android Apps and Games] lenny64:
@ignoramous

Is a feature planned to add your own VPN, for example for public networks?

Since no two VPNs can run on Android, an openvpn feature have to be combined into one app service.
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Not our own VPN service, but yes, you'd be able to connect to any upstream WireGuard endpoint (not OpenVPN as it's too complex).

In fact we just completed making changes to our network engine to support that (commit). Only UI work is pending (which is a lot of work), which I expect to be finished in about 2 to 4 weeks.
[Android Apps and Games] lenny64:
Sometimes the vpn disconnects without reconnect on phone with miui os (12.05.03), maybe on connection change, is this a known problem? I have to open the RethinkDNS app.

Edit:

@ignoramous

I think the Problem on the device startend with Version 54a (f-droid). It is not usable, too many disconnects.
[Android Apps and Games] Etterbeek:
Maybe a stupid newbie question, but no matter which DNS I pick, the latency is so great that it is starting to make me want to pay for ad guard.

Is there something I am missing? Anyway to fix this?
[Android Apps and Games] lenny64:
How did you measure the difference? I can't notice any increase in latency.
[Android Apps and Games] Etterbeek:
I went from 10 secs in an older version to 120 secs in the current. It says it in the app.
[Android Apps and Games] lenny64:
seconds? just millisconds on my side, mostly under 50ms, I can not confirm this problem.

Anyone here using miui os?

I noticed that something is requesting a 4 digit number in the dns records very often. The app is unknown by RethinkDNS, any way to track down the app?
[Android Apps and Games] donjoe0:
Is anyone else seeing a huge delay in new app detection by RDNS? On my phone it takes tens of minutes, maybe a solid half hour sometimes, before RDNS detects that I've installed a new app and applies my option to auto-block it. Very weird behavior, so I've deactivated that autoblock option for now since I'm still running AFWall+ and I have that one autoblock everything anyway. But this could become a problem if I switch to RDNS+F as a full solution on another newer phone later.
[Android Apps and Games] orgshooter:
The enabled on-device logging certainly increases the battery consumption!

Wouldn't a note be better here to deactivate this option to save battery?
[Android Apps and Games] webleeper:
Are there any plans or ways to make this work with a 3rd party VPN like NordVPN?
[Android Apps and Games] donjoe0:
I have it disabled right now, and IIRC it came disabled by default at installation.
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Glad. I hope you didn't uninstall it after 10mins ;)

Are you technical enough to share bugreport? If so, can you please email it to me mz at celzero dot com. No pressure.

Also, please make sure that battery optimization is disabled on Rethink, and that you run its as an Always-on VPN? MiUI is known to kill Rethink more often than other ROMs (for example, OxygenOS on my OnePlus never kills Rethink).

Yikes. In the newer versions of the app, you can enable DNS Booster. It speeds up DNS significantly. Like very significantly. The median latency, after the app has learnt about most frequent DNS queries, drops down to 0ms. It is so good that I am thinking we should enable it by default.

If you do enable DNS Booster, let me know how it goes for you (including any bugs you spot). Thanks.

Strange. Can you share a screenshot of the (network / dns) log entry (tap on the entry and grab a screen of the bottom-sheet that comes up with detailed information), if you're comfortable sharing it?

This is by design: Rethink doesn't actively look for newly installed apps (as that's battery consuming). Instead, the minute Rethink sees a "new app" that it has never seen before, it throws the notification informing about it to the user and blocking its connections. There are no leaks here.

I can see how this behaviour can be confusing. May be we should reword "Block newly installed apps..." to something else? Perhaps, "Block newly detected apps..." / "Block app and notify on first connection"?

Hm, I don't believe disabling on-device logs might save that much battery, to be honest. It'll save you a lot of disk space and lower Rethink's RAM consumption. You can disable on-device logging from Configure -> Settings -> Logs.

DNS-only mode should be the most battery friendly, but the downside is there's no firewall.

Yes, if the upstream VPN supports WireGuard. v055 (due in 10 days) will add support for WireGuard upstreams. Here's the tracking issue on our github: https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/52
[Android Apps and Games] orgshooter:
@ignoramous

Version 0.54c is not available in F-Droid yet.

With 0.54a, I had very high battery consumption with RethinkDNS with my S20FE (SM-G780G) and OneUI 5.1.

The app was the main consumer with up to 16.4% (DNS and Firewall were activated, no Filterlists).

I don't think this is normal, because NetGuard was never so noticeable in battery consumption with max. 3% in 2..3 days.

No improvement after deleting App Cache.

Tomorrow I start a new Test with 0.54c!
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Were you using NetGuard in filtering mode (that's a paid feature)? If not, Rethink and NetGuard are not comparable.

I'd be surprised if even in filtering mode NetGuard was that efficient...

And, do let me know if v054c improves things for you. If none of the apps are "Bypass DNS & Firewall", then I think the drain shouldn't be all that high. The firewall functions a bit differently when any app is added to "Bypass DNS & Firewall".
[Android Apps and Games] orgshooter:
Yes, I use Netguard in filtering mode!

This could then be a reason for the high battery consumption, because I "Block all apps when device is locked", but some Apps must use backgrounddata and have to acces to the Internet when device is locked and use my selected DNS-Server.

These Apps are "Bypass Universal":
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Bypass Universal isn't the same as Bypass DNS & Firewall. It is the latter that changes the behaviour of the way the firewall rules are applied (probably resulting in higher power-use mostly because of misbehaving firewalled apps).

Gotcha. I guess NetGuard is somehow more efficient? On my Android 12 device, Rethink rarely crosses 3% battery use and I track it daily. It is another thing that other apps have higher power consumption due to the presence of a firewall (as in, some apps wouldn't take "no" for an answer, and keep hammering away). I usually "Force Stop" such misbehaving apps.
[Android Apps and Games] orgshooter:
@ignormous no significant improvement with v054c!

The first day (most time in wifi) was okay, but the second day (most time with 4G) is not acceptable for me and my usage.

But I hope you solve the problem, when more user have it too.
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Thanks.

Battery use is usually a function of firewall rules (universal, ip rules) and installed apps (and how they behave). Like mentioned above, see which apps misbehave when firewalled ("Stats" screen on most blocked connections might help here), and "Force Stop" them if they need not necessarily be running in the background all the time. I know this is tedious to do every single time, but Rethink can't automate this either (the API for any app to "kill" / "force stop" other apps was removed by Google citing security reasons, and rightly so).

That said, we'll keep trying to see what else we could improve to reduce power use.
[Android Apps and Games] sabei:
Hi, sorry if I have missed it in the FAQ's or earlier in the thread but can someone tell me how I can exclude the following url from presumably being blocked by something.

Running DNS and Firewall. Ticked box for Max and for RDNS Privacy

Within my browser I can fully access weather.com/weather/tenday…. followed by a series of numbers and letters.

However if I switch to the Radar tab or go directly there – weather.com/weather/radar/interactive/l/………loads of numbers and letters, it will not load any content and there is just a blank page.

I tried to Trust this IP and Domain in the Network Logs but either I got the wrong one or it did not have any effect.
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Hi: Perhaps there are other domains being blocked that weather.com loads on its webpage?

One way to find out is to open weather.com/x/y/z in the browser and immediately observe what domains are being blocked from the DNS logs UI. This is cumbersome, but it is the only way, right now, if you're blocking one things too many.

I just tried visting weather.com 10d forecast for Pattaya on my Android with Rethink enabled, and the webpage showed up without ads just fine. I use the RDNS Default endpoint on the app.
[Android Apps and Games] Fishawy:
Add *.s.w-x.co to allowlist/whitelist. It's essential for The Weather Channel app to work.

I was facing similar issues with NextDNS and other services, and whitelisting this solved my problem.
[Android Apps and Games] pratik_193:
Is there a way to block ads on apps like google news?

So ads are blocked, but then it leaves with a area "web page not available". Any way to block this too?
[Android Apps and Games] sabei:
Yes as I showed in the pics the 10 day is no issue. It is only the radar which is interactive which shows a blank screen.

Switching to default didn't change it.

See next reply below.
[Android Apps and Games] sabei:
Thanks. Although I am not using the app (accessed via browser) I had a look and was going to ask how to actually whitelist it when I noticed in the logs I could trust a connection. I presume that is how you do it?

Anyway trusted that and then added mparticle.weather.com as it did not seem to work on that alone. Initially still did not open then after rebotting a couple of times it did.

Thanks again.
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
Hi there: This isn't possible with a DNS-based content blocker like Rethink. Well, until at least we add HTTPS-based content filtering (like AdGuard does): https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/55
[Android Apps and Games] sabei:
@ignoramous

I have just downloaded the v055 update.

Apologies if discussed before but after applying the update Protection was off and I had to re-enable. Would it not be better, if it is possible, to continue in the state it was in if you are only applying an update?
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
After an update, if you open the app, you shouldn't have to click the "START" button again if the app was already running before the update, is what you're saying? If so, Rethink does try to do exactly that. If it isn't working in v055, likely it is a bug, or you hit an edge case. Either way, we'll take a look: https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/1009

Thanks.
[Android Apps and Games] sabei:
Yes App is permanently on for me.
[Android Apps and Games] ElIT3ShOOT3R:
Can I use this app to just for anti censorship without the enabling firewall?
[Android Apps and Games] ignoramous:
You don't have to set ANY firewall rules, but you'd definitely have to run the app in DNS + Firewall mode to use its anti-censorship measures. Note that this measure doesn't work against stringent blockades like the one in China, Russia, and in some cases, Iran. However, its anti-censorship measures do work in most other countries like Indonesia, Turkmenistan, India, and in some cases, Iran.