A world of connections.Made simple.

The iPhone app is coming soon. Some features are still being tested and refined, and public downloads are not yet available. Timing and download details will be announced here. Screenshots and features are development previews and may change before release.

Sign in to the same Apple Account on your Mac and each iPhone, enable iCloud Passwords & Keychain, and turn on sync in each app. Upload existing profiles, then pull and merge them on other devices. Connections and active profiles remain independent. iPhone sync is still in testing; availability will be announced with the release.

In short: (1) Lighter: a native app with no browser engine, about 210 MB in total and near-zero background CPU. (2) Steadier: long AI chats, large uploads and idle connections are tested on virtual and real Macs before every release. (3) Cleaner: the default mode leaves system routes and DNS alone, and macOS cleans up after it quits. (4) Safer: subscription URLs and node passwords are stored encrypted, with no ads or third-party analytics.

Most people should keep the default, Transparent Proxy. It is lighter, leaves system network settings alone, coexists better with work VPNs, and covers browsers, AI apps and command-line tools. Switch to TUN only when you need DNS protection with Fake-IP or need to capture unusual traffic such as ping. You can switch at any time from the menu bar.

Every real-world drop we've seen became a required pre-release check: reusing a connection after 50 seconds idle, uploading requests over 2 MB (such as long AI coding contexts), and opening sites whose addresses are tampered with. Each stable release must pass on a virtual-machine network matrix and a physical Mac. It also reconnects by itself after sleep or a Wi-Fi or Ethernet change.

Nothing is left behind. AetherRoute uses only Apple's official Network Extension, installs no root helper and does not change system proxy settings. The default Transparent Proxy mode leaves routes and DNS alone, and when you disconnect, quit or the app stops unexpectedly, macOS takes everything back and your network returns to normal.

Thanks to pure Swift 6 and statically linked Rust protocol engines, AetherRoute consumes over 60% less memory than Electron apps like Clash Verge (around 210MB vs 500MB~800MB+) and eliminates Chromium background wakeups, achieving 0.0% ~ 0.1% background idle CPU via mach_msg2_trap. Its throughput efficiency and sandbox safety rival Surge Mac, without requiring privileged root helpers.

AetherRoute is built 100% natively as pure arm64 with zero Rosetta 2 translation overhead or memory penalty. It takes deep advantage of Apple silicon hardware: (1) harnesses ARMv8 Cryptography Extensions (hardware AES/SHA instructions) directly in silicon for line-rate encryption without CPU bottlenecks; (2) leverages Apple Unified Memory with static core linkage to eliminate IPC serialization and duplicate memory copying; (3) integrates with efficiency-core scheduling, placing 100% of threads into mach_msg2_trap deep kernel sleep when collapsed for 0.0% ~ 0.1% idle CPU and all-day battery life; (4) uses NEPacketTunnelFlow batched packet coalescing to cut kernel context switches by over 95%.

AetherRoute embeds Transparent Proxy (App Proxy) and Direct TUN engines, both supporting Rule, Global, and Direct modes. Transparent Proxy is lightweight and keeps macOS DNS authoritative; Direct TUN captures all TCP/UDP traffic and command-line tools with built-in Fake-IP.

AetherRoute natively supports 12 modern protocols: VLESS (XTLS-Vision, REALITY, uTLS), VMess, Trojan, Hysteria 2, TUIC v5, Shadowsocks (SS2022, ShadowTLS v3), ShadowQUIC, WireGuard, AnyTLS, SSH Tunnel, HTTP/HTTPS, and SOCKS5. It supports Clash YAML subscriptions, Base64 share links, safe aetherroute:// URL imports, native visual editing, and encrypted .aetherroute backups.

1.0.18 introduces a lossless in-memory optimization engine. Without mutating on-disk profiles, it injects domestic direct rules and fast domestic DNS (223.5.5.5) at runtime. Critical Apple domains (swcdn.apple.com, etc.) bypass Fake-IP and resolve directly to authentic domestic Anycast IPs, verified at 34.9 MB/s line-rate throughput.

AetherRoute uses native ServiceManagement APIs for sandboxed launch at login. It remembers user connection intent across reboot and sleep-wake, features anti-oscillation recovery during Wi-Fi/Ethernet handovers, and performs clean fail-safe teardown upon termination.

Inspect live connections, rates, transferred bytes, and matched rule chains. Latency testing uses explicit layered semantics: fast concurrent TCP reachability sweeps plus genuine protocol-level handshakes. Includes an interactive route simulator and terminal proxy export shortcuts.

AetherRoute is built 100% on Apple's modern user-space Network Extension APIs. It requires no kernel extensions (kexts), no disabling of SIP, and no Reduced Security mode. It is Developer ID signed and Apple double-notarized for security compliance.

You need an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 15 or later and your own subscription or nodes. Install the app, import your profile, approve the Network Extension when prompted, and connect.

The client is free to use without paid activation. Servers and subscription services are not included; bring your own.