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Comment by microflash | Hacker News Reader

Is there something like this for iOS? I know Adguard but it is not open source.

Lockdown claims to be open-source. Their appstore client has paid mode for per-app blocklists. I don't know if they support per-app allow lists.

https://github.com/confirmedcode/Lockdown-iOS

Something already included in iOS is App Privacy Report feature.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102188

This doesn’t seem to show any site I browse in the DuckDuckGo app, which raises the question, if DDG can hide connections it makes from showing in privacy report, can any (more nefarious) app do the same?

Something similar would be Proxyman: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/proxyman-network-debug-tool/id...

But it’s more designed to be a debug tool than to block traffic from specific apps

https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardForiOS

I am pretty sure it is open source. I’ve been using it for years both for upstream DNS and blocklist filtering.

Huh, didn’t know about the repo. Thanks for posting it here.

Isn’t AdGuard just dns protection (and Safari extension). Afaik something like this isn’t easily doable in iOS. Some options are:

* Shadowrocket - you can set complex rules on what hosts/connections should be routed by what, but afaik you are not able to isolate traffic on a per-app basis.

* I think you can set up per-app VPN on iOS, but you must use MDM, can’t do it on an unmanaged profile. Link: https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/vpn-overview-depa...

> per-app VPN on iOS, but you must use MDM

Yet iOS allows Safari per-site VPN without enterprise MDM, via Apple Configurator profile.

The APIs to implement traffic policies on a per-app basis just don’t exist on iOS. You can create a VPN connection and have an app manage all network traffic that way, but you can’t associate traffic with specific apps since this would run afoul of their sandbox. At least without jailbreaking.

I came here to ask a similar question, looking for alternatives to Lockdown Privacy on iOS/iPadOS. [1] I've been using Lockdown for some years as a local and system firewall to block trackers across all apps, but this company got sold a few years ago and has since been annoyingly and frequently pushing for its paid subscription. It also moved some free blocking lists to the paid subscription.

Any alternatives to Lockdown on iOS/iPadOS would be nice to know about.

[1]: https://lockdownprivacy.com/

Only in China I believe.

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