Captun turns your computer into a smart hotspot. Phones, TVs and consoles connect over Wi-Fi, a cable or USB, and you decide where each one's traffic goes: straight out, through a VPN, or through a proxy.
One app instead of
Captun (captain + TUN) puts you at the helm of everything that connects to your computer.
Connect your computer to a VPN or proxy once, and your smart TV, console or a guest's phone uses it through the hotspot.
No mobile data, no Wi-Fi? Plug the Android phone into your computer and it goes online through it, with no root and no app on the phone.
Block ads and trackers for every device, keep some websites off-limits, or send only certain websites through a proxy.
See who is connected and how much each one uses, approve new devices before they get online, block one, or set a speed limit.
A small service with administrator rights runs the hotspot, a DNS server and a packet engine that decides, connection by connection, which way each device's traffic goes. The desktop app shows what is happening and changes the settings.
Rules, DNS, limits
Press the helm: a Wi-Fi hotspot with your own network name and password, or USB to an Android phone.
Your computer's network adapters are there already. Add a proxy, or paste a VPN link.
Choose the way out for each device or group, and add rules, DNS blocking, speed limits and allowances.
On Windows the engine captures devices' traffic with WinDivert, whose driver is signed by Microsoft; on Linux it uses a TUN network adapter and policy routing.
Three ways for a device to get online through your computer.
Your own network name and password, a limit on how many devices may join, and new devices waiting until you allow them.
Devices on a network cable or a USB network adapter get your internet, with their addresses handed out automatically (DHCP).
Reverse tethering with no root and no app on the phone: Captun has adb built in. It only gives the phone internet and never uses the phone's. Web and apps work; games and calls don't yet.
Keep them away from this computer, from each other or from your home network.
See who is connected, with live speeds, and step in before a new device gets online.
Each device or group goes out the way you choose. Turn on the ones you want to use.
Send one website through the VPN, block ads, or switch the kids' tablet off at bedtime. The first rule that fits decides.
Captun answers website lookups for your devices, so blocking and your own answers work on all of them.
Per hour or per day, for one device or all of them, as a chart or a table.
Experimental: per-device ways out, rules, speed limits, data allowances, live speeds and the usage history need “Route devices through Captun”, Captun's own routing engine, which is still experimental.
These are already in Captun's code and pass its tests. They come with the next version, once they have been tried on real computers.
Phones scan a code to join the hotspot, with no typing.
Each device's maker and kind (phone, laptop, TV), from the public list of hardware address prefixes.
No internet for 15 minutes, an hour or until morning, or internet hours with none at night.
Needs the routing engine
Every way out is checked every 30 seconds. Give one a backup, and its devices move there while it isn't working.
Needs the routing engine
Save what each device used as a CSV file, for example for a monthly report.
Needs the routing engine
When a new device joins or waits to be allowed, when a device has used 80% or all of its allowance, and last week's use. The allowance and weekly ones need the routing engine.
Not on GitHub yet: the version you can build from source today doesn't have them.
It reads only what your rules need, such as the website name a connection asks for.
What your devices send stays as encrypted as it was. Captun routes it; it doesn't open it.
No account. Settings are saved encrypted, readable only by your account on that computer.
Captun doesn't encrypt or hide traffic on its own: that comes from the VPN or proxy you add, for the traffic you send through it.
One Rust codebase with a Tauri desktop app.
Wi-Fi hotspot, cable sharing and USB to an Android phone. Windows' own hotspot takes up to 8 devices by default.
Wi-Fi hotspot with NetworkManager or hostapd, cable sharing and USB to phone. Little tested on real hardware so far.
The code builds, but it hasn't run on a Mac yet.
There is no Android or iOS app: phones, tablets, TVs and consoles connect to Captun, they don't run it.
Captun is under active development. You can build it from source today; the README on GitHub has every step.
Rust, Node.js 20 or newer and a C compiler, and on Linux libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev.
The repository's scripts download Xray-core for VPN links, checked against a pinned checksum, and on Windows the WinDivert driver.
Build the service and start the desktop app. The app starts the service itself, with an administrator prompt.
Yes. Choose the VPN's network adapter, a proxy, or a VPN link you paste (VLESS, VMess, Trojan, Shadowsocks, Hysteria2) as the way out for a device or for everyone. Choosing it per device uses Captun's routing engine, which is still experimental.
No. Turn on USB debugging on the Android phone and plug it in; Captun's built-in adb does the rest. The phone uses your computer's internet, never the other way round. Web and apps work over USB; games and calls don't yet.
Yes. Each device or group can have its own way out, its own DNS servers, its own speed limit and its own data allowance, and rules can send single websites another way. This uses the experimental routing engine.
No. It routes traffic and reads only what it needs to apply your rules, such as the website name a connection asks for. Contents stay encrypted.
Not by itself. Captun doesn't encrypt or anonymise anything; the VPN or proxy you add does, for the traffic you send through it.
On Windows, the system's hotspot takes up to 8 devices by default, and Captun has a device limit of its own you can set. It hasn't been tested with large numbers of users.
Windows and Linux; macOS is in progress. There is no Android or iOS app: phones and tablets connect to Captun.
There is no release yet. You can build it from source: the steps are in the README on GitHub.
Not yet: the app is in English. This website is translated so that more people can read about it.
Captun