Vortix

Terminal UI for WireGuard and OpenVPN with multi-tunnel control, real-time telemetry, and leak guarding.

See multi-connection, leak detection, split-tunnel, and profile-management demos

Multi-connection	Leak detection
Split tunnel	Profile management

Why Vortix?

Vortix gives WireGuard and OpenVPN users one keyboard-driven view of their tunnels and the network around them. It is useful when plain wg-quick or openvpn provides too little visibility, while a full desktop VPN client is too heavy or tied to one provider.

• Connect multiple profiles and distinguish the default-route tunnel from split-route tunnels.
• See throughput, latency, jitter, packet loss, exit identity, DNS policy, and encryption state.
• Detect IPv4, IPv6, and DNS-policy exposure instead of assuming a successful handshake means traffic is protected.
• Control the same engine from the TUI, CLI, or versioned JSON output.
• Work locally, over SSH, and across macOS and Linux.

Vortix orchestrates the system wg, wg-quick, and openvpn implementations; it does not implement either VPN protocol itself.

Quick start

Install the protocol tools first:

# macOS
brew install wireguard-tools openvpn

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install wireguard-tools openvpn

# Arch / CachyOS / Manjaro
sudo pacman -S wireguard-tools openvpn

# Fedora
sudo dnf install wireguard-tools openvpn

Only the .deb and .rpm packages pull these in; with any other channel, install them first. Vortix drives wg-quick and openvpn as subprocesses, so without them a profile imports but cannot connect. vortix up names the missing package and the install command for your distro.

Then install Vortix using your preferred channel:

Import a profile and connect:

vortix import ./work.conf       # .conf, .ovpn, URL, or directory
sudo vortix                    # interactive dashboard

# Or stay in the CLI
sudo vortix up work
vortix status
sudo vortix down work

Changing tunnels, routes, DNS or the firewall needs root; list, show and status do not. If sudo vortix is not found after a Cargo install or the shell installer, link it once: sudo ln -s ~/.cargo/bin/vortix /usr/local/bin/vortix.

Every command, key and panel is in the usage guide.

Highlights

Platform support

macOS is the primary development platform; Linux is tested on every change and live before each release. Reports from other distributions help: include vortix report.

Source builds need Rust 1.85 or newer. Linux 5.6 or newer is recommended for in-kernel WireGuard.

Vortix runs as root only to change tunnels, routes, DNS and the firewall, never runs commands from a profile, and has no server of its own. What it does with privilege and data is in SECURITY.md.

Documentation

Contributing

Contributions and real-world testing are welcome:

• Start with a good first issue.
• Run a scenario from the release test plan.
• Share Linux results in the Linux tester discussion.
• Use Discussions for questions and ideas.

See CONTRIBUTING.md to get started; Nix users can run nix develop.

Featured in

awesome-rust · awesome-ratatui · awesome-tuis · Arch Linux extra · Terminal Trove · LinuxLinks · Orhun Parmaksız's spotlight · RustNation UK talk deck · JustTUI

Also by the author

mercury — keyboard-first API client for the terminal. 5 MB, 50 ms startup. · afk — menu bar break reminder, 2.8 MB.

Star history

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WireGuard® is a registered trademark of Jason A. Donenfeld. OpenVPN® is a registered trademark of OpenVPN Inc. Vortix is not affiliated with either.