Vortix

Terminal UI for WireGuard and OpenVPN with real-time telemetry and leak guarding.

Why Vortix?

I wanted a single interface to:

• See connection status, throughput, and latency at a glance
• Detect IPv6/DNS leaks without running separate tools
• Switch between VPN profiles without remembering CLI flags

Existing options (wg show, NetworkManager, Tunnelblick) either lack real-time telemetry or require a GUI.

Features

• WireGuard & OpenVPN — Auto-detects .conf and .ovpn files
• Advanced Telemetry — Real-time throughput, latency, jitter, and packet loss
• Geo-Location — Instant detection of your exit IP's city and country
• Leak detection — Monitors for IPv6 leaks and DNS leaks in real-time
• Kill Switch — Built-in firewall management for maximum security
• Interactive Import — Easily add new profiles directly within the TUI
• Config Viewer — Inspect profile configurations directly within the TUI
• Keyboard-driven — No mouse required

Requirements

macOS

• macOS 12+ (uses ifconfig, netstat, wg, ps, pfctl)
• Rust 1.75+ (for building from source)
• WireGuard: brew install wireguard-tools
• OpenVPN: brew install openvpn

Linux

• Linux kernel 3.10+ (kernel 5.6+ recommended for native WireGuard; older kernels require wireguard-tools)
• iproute2 (for ip addr interface detection; pre-installed on most distros)
• iptables or nftables (for kill switch; prefers iptables when both are available)
• Rust 1.75+ (for building from source)

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install wireguard-tools openvpn iptables iproute2

Fedora/RHEL:

sudo dnf install wireguard-tools openvpn iptables iproute

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S wireguard-tools openvpn iptables iproute2

DNS detection uses resolvectl (systemd-resolved) as the primary method, with nmcli (NetworkManager) and /etc/resolv.conf as fallbacks. Non-systemd distros (Alpine, Void, Gentoo OpenRC) will use the /etc/resolv.conf fallback automatically.

Installation

From crates.io (Recommended):

cargo install vortix

Quick install (Binary):

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/Harry-kp/vortix/releases/latest/download/vortix-installer.sh | sh

Static binary (Linux - works on any distro):

Download the x86_64-unknown-linux-musl release from the releases page. This is a fully static binary with no runtime dependencies.

From source:

git clone https://github.com/Harry-kp/vortix.git
cd vortix
cargo install --path .

Profiles are stored in ~/.config/vortix/profiles/ with chmod 600.

Keybindings

How It Works

Telemetry: A background thread polls system network stats every second for throughput (macOS: netstat -ib, Linux: /proc/net/dev). Network quality (latency, jitter, loss) is calculated using multi-packet ICMP probes. Public IP, ISP, and Geo-location data are fetched via ipinfo.io/json.

Security (Kill Switch & Leak Detection):

• Kill Switch: Platform-native firewall integration. macOS uses PF (Packet Filter) via pfctl. Linux supports both iptables (with a dedicated VORTIX_KILLSWITCH chain) and nftables (with an atomic vortix_killswitch table) for clean teardown. Automatically blocks all non-VPN traffic when connection drops.
• IPv6 Leak: Active monitoring via api6.ipify.org. Any IPv6 traffic detected while VPN is active triggers a leak warning.
• DNS Leak: Monitors DNS configuration to ensure nameservers align with the secure tunnel (macOS: scutil --dns / networksetup, Linux: resolvectl / nmcli / /etc/resolv.conf).

WireGuard Integration: macOS resolves interface names via /var/run/wireguard/*.name. Linux uses kernel WireGuard interfaces directly (wg0, wg1, etc.). Both platforms parse wg show for handshake timing, transfer stats, and endpoint metadata.

OpenVPN Integration: Tracks session uptime and connection status via ps proc parsing. Interface detection uses ifconfig on macOS and ip addr on Linux.

Platform Notes

Development

cargo build         # Build binary
cargo test          # Run unit/integration tests
cargo clippy        # Enforce code quality (Fail-fast via pre-commit)

Featured In

• Terminal Trove — The $HOME of all things in the terminal

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