Upcoming firewall feature vs non-root adblockers

~2 weeks ago the devs announced the upcoming firewall feature for Android and it looks like it will rely on establishing a VPN connection to localhost to achieve this feature. This makes sense due to how Android works but it also under the limitation that only one VPN connection can be established at once.

This could be an issue for users with system-wide ad-blockers.
There that those, which require root and modify the hosts-file directly (Adaway) and there are others that don’t need root and instead rely on a VPN to localhost (NetGuard, DNS66). The latter group could not work at the same time as Glasswire with an enabled application firewall.

With a little wishful thinking the ideal solution for this problem could be that Glasswire also adds optional adblocking capabilities into its Android app. This could be an issue with Google and their Play Store guidelines but I would like to point you to NetGuard’s solution: https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard
They have a normal firewall app in the PlayStore without any adblocking features and an apk with adblocking enabled on GitHub. They are signed with the same certificate and in-app purchases from the Play Store version also work with the sideloaded apk.
I know this is a ‘hack’ and you probably don’t want to do this but please consider how much of your userbase is already using an adblocker and how it will play out with the upcoming firewall feature on Android. They will be forced to choose between one of these two local VPNs. :thinking:

Thanks for your feedback. We will improve the app over time and find solutions to different unexpected problems due to helpful feedback like yours.

It’s great how Android users are so vocal about their requests. It makes it easier to develop for Android.