NetPilot

English · فارسی

Network control for Android, and a companion app for Windows. DNS you choose and test yourself, live traffic you can actually see, per-app bandwidth caps, scheduled limits — and a phone VPN tunnel that can be shared with a Windows PC.

Two apps, one repository:

NetPilotMobile/	Android app — Kotlin + Jetpack Compose
NetPilot/	Windows app — .NET 8 + WPF, plus its installer
NetPilot.Tests/	Unit and integration tests for the Windows side

Screenshots

Android

Windows

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Android app

• Network health dashboard — one score for DNS quality, latency, packet loss and link stability, next to a live traffic chart and running totals.
• DNS manager — curated resolvers plus your own, each benchmarked for response time, with a one-tap restore of whatever was configured before.
• Live monitor — download/upload charts from a one-second to a one-hour window.
• Per-app usage — who is actually downloading, sorted by volume.
• Internet limiter — a download/upload cap per app, or block it outright. The caps are enforced in the tunnel, not just displayed.
• Scheduled limits — rules that apply during chosen hours of the day.
• Profiles — build a configuration once, export it, import it anywhere.
• Network tools — ping, nslookup, DNS cache flush and reset, inside the app.
• Local VPN tunnel — two modes: DNS only (just queries go through your chosen path, everything else is untouched) and Full tunnel (all traffic follows that path). If the path fails the app falls back to the normal one, so the phone never loses connectivity.
• Phone Tunnel → PC — hand this phone's VPN tunnel to a Windows machine over a shared Wi-Fi, the phone's hotspot, USB tethering or an ADB link.

Fully bilingual (English / Persian, including RTL), dark theme throughout. No location, files or camera permissions. Usage access is only needed for the per-app usage table and stays optional.

Windows app

Same toolset as a desktop app: dashboard with health scoring, DNS management with backup and restore, live network monitor, per-app usage, an internet limiter (real Windows QoS policies for upload, a token bucket for download), scheduled and time-based limits, event and connection history, network tools, adapter inventory, and the Phone Tunnel → PC page that pairs with the Android app and lets the desktop browse through the phone.

The Windows app runs elevated (requireAdministrator) and opens its own firewall rule for the bridge port, removing it again on uninstall.

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How the phone → PC tunnel works

Android app  ──HTTP :8787 (control)──▶  Windows bridge
Android app  ◀──HTTP :8788 (data)───   Windows proxy
                                            │
                                            ▼
                                     phone VPN tunnel ──▶ internet

• The desktop listens on 8787; the phone runs a small HTTP proxy on 8788 that tunnels CONNECT byte-for-byte and the desktop points WinHTTP/WinINET at it.
• Every socket that proxy opens is put back into the phone's tunnel with VpnService.protect() — the app excludes its own package from the tunnel to avoid loops, so without that the desktop would end up on the phone's real IP instead of its VPN.
• Four supported paths: shared Wi-Fi, phone hotspot, USB tethering, and adb reverse tcp:8787 tcp:8787 for development.
• Android allows one VPN app at a time, so either NetPilot's own tunnel runs (full-tunnel mode) or another VPN client runs and NetPilot's tunnel stays off. Either way the desktop ends up inside whichever VPN the phone is using.

What it is not: the desktop bridge is a proxy, not an IP-level gateway. Programs that honour the system proxy (browsers, most apps) go through the phone; anything opening raw sockets or using UDP/QUIC does not. Android also never forwards packets that arrive on Wi-Fi into an app's tunnel, which is why "route mode" cannot work here by design.

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Building

Android

cd NetPilotMobile
./gradlew lintDebug testDebugUnitTest assembleDebug assembleRelease

• minSdk 26 (Android 8.0) · targetSdk 36 · Kotlin + Compose · Java 17
• Universal APK: arm64-v8a, armeabi-v7a, x86, x86_64

Signing: the release keystore is not in this repository. Copy keystore.properties.example to keystore.properties and fill it in, or export NETPILOT_STORE_FILE, NETPILOT_STORE_PASSWORD, NETPILOT_KEY_ALIAS and NETPILOT_KEY_PASSWORD (what CI should do). Without either, assembleRelease still builds — the APK is simply unsigned.

Generate a keystore once with:

keytool -genkeypair -v -keystore netpilot-release.jks -alias netpilot \
        -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

Windows

dotnet build NetPilot\NetPilot.csproj

• .NET 8, WPF, net8.0-windows · Windows 10 1607+ / Windows 11
• Requires administrator rights to install and run

Installer (self-contained, no .NET needed on the target machine):

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File installer\build.ps1
# -> dist\NetPilot-Setup.exe

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Testing

# Everything: Windows tests, Android tests + lint, and a check that the suite left the
# machine's firewall, proxy and routing untouched.
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File NetPilot\Tools\verify.ps1

# Also run the Windows tests elevated - two suites change the real DNS servers and the
# real Windows QoS policies, then put everything back.
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File NetPilot\Tools\verify.ps1 -Elevated

# End-to-end installer test: install -> run -> uninstall
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File NetPilot\Tools\verify.ps1 -Installer

Suite	Where	Count
Android unit tests	NetPilotMobile/app/src/test/	92
Windows unit tests	NetPilot.Tests/	43
Installer end-to-end	NetPilot/installer/test.ps1	install / run / uninstall

The Windows suite includes integration tests that drive the real networking stack: they apply a DNS resolver and assert the adapter comes back byte-identical, and they create and remove an actual Windows QoS policy.

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Repository layout

NetPilotMobile/          Android app
  app/src/main/java/com/netpilot/mobile/
    vpn/                 tunnel, packet relay, firewall, limiter engine
    net/                 DNS forwarding, queries, health scoring
    pc/                  desktop bridge client, LAN discovery, LAN proxy server
    data/                repository, settings, strings
  app/src/test/          JVM unit tests
NetPilot/                Windows app (.NET 8 + WPF)
  Services/              background services and the HTTP bridge
  ViewModels/            MVVM view models
  Lang/                  bilingual string tables
  installer/             single-file installer (built with the in-box C# compiler)
  Tools/                 icon, feature graphic, screenshot and verify scripts
NetPilot.Tests/          Windows unit and integration tests
docs/                    documentation and screenshots

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Releases

Binaries are published as GitHub Release assets, not committed: NetPilot-<version>-release.apk, NetPilot-Windows-<version>-Setup.exe and the SHA256SUMS.txt for them.

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Security notes

• Never commit keystore.properties, *.jks or *.keystore. Whoever holds the signing key can ship an update that phones install as if it came from us. Both are in .gitignore; if either has already been pushed, rotate the key.
• The Windows bridge authenticates with a token that is regenerated on every app start and issued only against a six-digit code shown in the UI, with five failed attempts per minute before it has to be re-issued.
• Pairing attempts are rate limited; unauthenticated requests are rejected before any handler runs.
• Before any change to the PC's network, the app snapshots interface metrics, routes, DNS and proxy state, and can put them back.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.