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:

Channel	Install
Homebrew (macOS, Linux)	brew install vortix (also installs wireguard-tools and openvpn)
Debian / Ubuntu	Download the .deb from Releases, then sudo apt install ./vortix_*_amd64.deb (or arm64)
Fedora / RHEL	Download the .rpm from Releases, then sudo dnf install ./vortix-*.x86_64.rpm (or aarch64)
Arch Linux	sudo pacman -S vortix
Cargo	cargo binstall vortix (prebuilt binary) or cargo install vortix (builds from source, needs about 4 GB of memory)
npm	npm install -g @harry-kp/vortix
Nix	nix profile install github:Harry-kp/vortix
Shell installer	curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/Harry-kp/vortix/releases/latest/download/vortix-installer.sh | sh
Static Linux binary	Download the musl archive from Releases

Import a profile and connect:

vortix import ./work.conf       # .conf, .ovpn, .netbird, 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

Area	What Vortix provides
Protocols	WireGuard .conf and OpenVPN .ovpn / .conf profiles, up to 1024 routes each; NetBird networks (.netbird), including moving from the NetBird app
Multi-tunnel	Full and split tunnels side by side, one default-route owner, and a Switch or Cancel choice on conflicts
Telemetry	Throughput, latency, jitter, packet loss, public IP, ISP, and location
Security Guard	IPv4/IPv6 exposure, DNS, encryption and kill-switch state, with one verdict
Kill switch	off, block-on-drop, and vpn-only, using PF on macOS or nftables on Linux
Automation	A versioned JSON envelope, NDJSON watch streams, stable exit codes, shell completions and hooks
Diagnostics	Event logs, OpenVPN daemon logs, session journals, per-process socket audit, and vortix report
Appearance	Seven built-in themes, including one that follows your terminal's colors

Platform support

	macOS	Linux
VPN tools	Homebrew wireguard-tools, openvpn	Distribution wireguard-tools, openvpn
Kill switch	PF (pfctl)	nftables (nft)
DNS	System Configuration	systemd-resolved or resolvconf
CI	macOS	Ubuntu and Fedora

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

For users
Usage	Commands, keys, panels, multiple tunnels, the kill switch, JSON
Configuration	Files, config.toml, settings.toml, hooks, DNS
Troubleshooting	What an error means and what to do
Upgrading	Steps when upgrading from an older version

For contributors
Contributing	How to build, test and send a change
CLAUDE.md	The project's rules and architecture, for people and coding agents
Project board	Planned and active work

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.