Android v0.6.0 RC is in open testing, and we want your feedback

[TechHutTV]

The Android client has been sitting on the same production build since May, still on the v0.71.0 core. There is a release candidate up in the Play Store open testing track now, and we would like real-world feedback before it ships.

Build: v0.6.0-rc.1-snapshot-10a35f9

How to join

1. Opt in here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/io.netbird.client
2. Then open the store listing and update: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.netbird.client

Do note it can take a few minutes for the beta build to show up after you opt in. If it does not appear, force close the Play Store, or clear its cache, and try again. This trips up a lot of people so check that before assuming something is broken.

What we would love confirmation on

If you have complained about any of these before, this is your chance to tell us whether it is fixed. Yes or no answers are genuinely useful here.

• Does the connection stay up overnight without a manual app restart?
• Does the quick settings tile actually toggle the connection, or does it still just open system settings?
• Do NetBird DNS names resolve, or are you still falling back to IPs?
• Battery drain compared to the stable build?

If something breaks

Vague reports do not help much, so please include:

• Device and Android version
• What you were doing when it broke
• Whether it is reproducible
• Client logs if you can grab them
• Whether the same thing happens on the current stable build

And "works fine, no issues on a Pixel 8 running Android 15, three days of daily use" is also useful. Confirmation that nothing broke is data.

[itsamenathan]

I put this issue in few days ago.
netbirdio/android-client#251

[pappz]

Thank you! I am on it!

[dasunsrule32]

Everything seems to work well, battery usage so far has been good. I'm just letting it run and going about my day to see how it looks.

One issue I have run into, exit nodes are giving me issues with quic errors where the old version didn't seem to do that.

It's running on Android 17 and my Pixel 10a.

[pappz]

Thank you! These logs do not cover the issue around Wifi-data switches :( . Could you run tests with these settings and check the battery consumption again?

• Enable force relay
• Enable lazy connection. You can do this on the Dashboard, not in the application.

[dasunsrule32]

@pappz attempted to capture the logs from the NB Console and am getting:

Client error: 'remote jobs are not enabled on this peer.'

It is enabled in the settings on my Pixel 10a in the NB app.

I will try again locally in a bit.

[pappz]

Yes, this is a new security restriction. Need to explicitly allow the remote jobs. But mainly I'm curious about your observation of the battery consumption with the different settings. With it maybe we can get better view about the issue

[dasunsrule32]

I will test a bit later. I have some things I need to do.

On a side note, it would be nice to assign Lazy Connections via the Console/API rather than blanket enable it for all devices. I know you can enable it manually per agent, but I don't want to do that as it's something easy to forget about configuration wise. Thanks! :)

[dasunsrule32]

Here is another bundle uploaded. I've been connected since about noon or around there. Battery is draining faster than normal. I enabled lazy connections. I included a battery usage screenshot as well.

cb96708d64d0e100ed03ac53ba7038c12b5cf96efbdcff715dd44cd2db253b20/1818460d-18a2-4cd9-9329-07061cb2c849

[redlandmover]

Been using for several months on Pixel 9 Pro. No noticeable issues at all. Kinda forgot it was beta! :P

[hchengting]

Hello, I posted a discussion (#7273) regarding peer disconnections that occur when switching networks.

[pappz]

Could you check again how the network switching behaves with the new version? We made some improvements on this topic (and we plan more).

[hchengting]

Hello @pappz ,

The same issue still occurs in the new version.

• android-client: b696eb7
• netbird: 7c12530

Here is the screen recording and the log file.
Hope this helps. Thank you!

Screenrecorder-2026-09-04-00-02-38-670.mp4

[hchengting]

Hi @pappz ,

I noticed that this discussion has been closed.
Have there been any updates regarding this issue?

Thank you very much for your work!

[smogger]

Landscape mode it not working with Xiaomi tab 8. (Otherwise finally it doesnt crash and can use the vpn on this tab)

[pappz]

Thank you! Will be fixed in RC.4.

[pernetz]

Works flawless on Pixel 8. Connects and disconnects much quicker compared to the previous version.
Same as above, landscape mode is not working.

[lionking102]

Thanks for the RC, testing it since this morning on my Pixel 8a, here are my first results. Using the official netbird-server, Lazy-Connections ON and "Force Relay" OFF:

• UI ist a insane improvement. Much simpler, intuitive and also more options. Also much more pretty. Thank you so much for the great work here!
• Connection: Profile with exit-node is running great, also the profile with individual ressources works great for now. I had not much network-changes, so I can`t speak for this problem, but it worked good for now.
• Battery: I was on WIFI over the day and I was SO happy, that battery-drain was great! 1% over about 8h, really good! But then I left the building and switched to mobile data and the battery-drain was sadly back... This is the biggest bummer for me on android, anything that can be done here? I would like to test and provide results, if it helps.

Here is a picture from today, you can see the difference when I left the wifi:

UPDATE 03.09.: Tested again today, this time with mobile-data. Battery-drain is as big as always, 70% of the idle use is netbird. Haven`t used the phone for a second during this time. So this backs up what I said yesterday.

I postet in reddit about my setup with the old version, so I will just paste it here, if it helps. I will test more tomorrow.

I have the same problem on android and it is really sad, because I love netbird so much. I read a lot of reddit threats and all the github issues, but cant get a good result.
I have a seperate test-network just to test this szenario with only one routing-peer:

• The routing-peer forwards one ressource, the ressource has the DNS-Name, there is no DNS-Server configured in netbird, so only this only connection should go through the tunnel, nothing else. In my tests this is also true.
• I have lazy-connections enabled, it doesn't change anything.
• Force-Relay doesn`t change anything.

The problem is not the battery-drain while using it, but while the phone is in idle. With lazy-connections I can see, that non of the ressources is connected, but the drain is the same... Shouldn`t lazy connections do, that netbird is inactive until a connection goes to the netbird-adapter, instead of always using up battery?

There is a really interessting post here:
#7185
It explains how the ICE Keepalive does happen far to often compared with other Wireguard-VPN apps, but non of the dev seems to have noticed it.

Other than the mobile-app-battery problem netbird is amazing! Great interface, great service, great desktop-apps, great settings. Thanks a lot, hope this can be fixed in the future.

[pappz]

Thank you for the feedback! Battery usage depends on many factors. Step by step, we are eliminating all the issues that drain the battery. Unfortunately, I can't promise we will deliver all fixes in this release, but I am on it.

[Nordlicht-13]

Batterydrain today on mobil-data 50 % of my Pixel 8 battery in 7 hours, with just using some e-mail-reading, messenges and camera for taking some fotos.

[lionking102]

Thank you for the feedback! Battery usage depends on many factors. Step by step, we are eliminating all the issues that drain the battery. Unfortunately, I can't promise we will deliver all fixes in this release, but I am on it.

That is awesome to hear, thank you so much for your work! It`s fine that it takes some time, at least someone you are on it. Can you explain, why it is so much worse on mobile-data than on wifi?

[StillLoading]

Running on a Pixel 9 XL Android 17

Settings:

• Always-on VPN: enabled
• Lazy Connections: disabled
• Force Relay: disabled
• No Exit Nodes
• Primary DNS via Network Resource

---

Current impression:

• Battery usage on WiFi is better then before
• Battery usage on Mobile still poor
• Connecting/Disconnecting feels faster
• Switching between networks (Wifi/Mobile) works without issues
• Widget button works
• No DNS or routing issues so far

Very happy with the UI upgrade / alignment with the desktop app!

[nsyvr]

Lenovo Tab P11 2nd gen running Android 14.

Netbird app crashes when opening. Cleared cache and storage data. didn't help. Cannot even install older version. it was working fine on the older version (0.71.0)

[pappz]

Could you try out with the new RC.6?

[DomiDomi3]

Great work on this, thanks a lot!

One minor thing I noticed: The Connect Slider can be dragged into position instead of tapped.
When you drag the Slider into "On", it doesnt actually connect. It only does when you tap it.

Samsung S26, Android 16 on rc3, but has been around for all rcs.

[NeoPxl]

Same here, if you drag it, either on or off is not relevant, nothing happens.

You can tap it in this "nothing" position to trigger the real action.

[WarmWelcome]

Liking all the new tunables so far, though I am here not for features but because the connection stability+reliability on android is nonexistent.

Cannot yet tell if the reliability is improved from the regular non-beta version. I have only had it for a night so far to test if I am still experiencing it failing in the background. It is. This acts the same as before, with it giving no indication in the app that it is not working nor any other difference from when it is working.

Cannot yet provide logs for this because the only option still is to upload the logs. I refuse to provide something I cant actually look at the contents of to see if there may be identifiable information in there, esp not with a beta version of the app. Give me the ability to dump it to a file on my phone so I can take a look through the logs at the very least. In the mean time, I will be running logcat reader in the background to receive trace logs then dump that to a file I can actually read. So many log entries have been lost tonight because I cant just put the logs into a file. Just add this, not sure why it hasnt been added yet.

Found this bug at least:
"Anonymize sensitive data" will automatically disable itself when going to any other section then coming back to the troubleshooting section.

Steps:

1. Enable the setting "Anonymize sensitive data"
2. Go to any other page
3. Go back to the troubleshooting page.

Expected result:
Setting remains enabled after following the steps.
Actual result:
Setting is disabled after following the steps

[pappz]

@WarmWelcome Thank you for the feedback. I made the PR for the anonymization level setting. You can track the status here: netbirdio/android-client#263. The file export would be a bigger development. I will see what I can do.
Meanwhile, do not forget that NetBird is an open source project. You can track what the code does, it is not a secret.

But let's jump to figuring out what the root cause of the issue is.

• What are the symptoms exactly? What do you mean by "no indication in the app that it is not working"? Do you lose the connection with your peers and cannot recover it? How do you test it? Via browser or with a specific application?

• What do you want to reach? A NetBird peer or a network behind a router, or are we talking about exit nodes?

• Are you using non default settings? I think of force relay mode and lazy connection.

• What is your device type? The different device providers are using different network related battery optimisations.

[WarmWelcome]

My apologies, I let my frustration from a bad day show through. Thank you for reading through and responding so thoroughly regardless.

Thank you for the feedback. I made the PR for the anonymization level setting. You can track the status here: netbirdio/android-client#263. The file export would be a bigger development. I will see what I can do.

I appreciate the PR for the fix, and for considering the ability to export to a file!

Meanwhile, do not forget that NetBird is an open source project. You can track what the code does, it is not a secret.

I know, but I am not proficient enough in digging through the codebase to put together what all will end up in there and what won't. Easier to read through the result than the ingredients sort of thing. Not that I don't trust the project, but I may have a different definition of what is okay to share and what is not okay to share.

1. What are the symptoms exactly?

The symptoms I faced on the old app were networks (with an A record dns zone entry) becoming inaccessible; Not sure in what scope and what time though, as it is very difficult to catch occurring. The new app is giving me those issues as well, but more issues with simply staying at all. It may be that it is now visually displaying the disconnection, but we shall see.

2. What do you mean by "no indication in the app that it is not working"?

I mean this in the literal sense. In the app, there is no visual difference between the connection working and the connection not working.

3. Do you lose the connection with your peers and cannot recover it?

It is nonrecoverable, it requires disabling and enabling netbird to recover it. I am unsure if it is the connection to the peers that is being broken however, since I am using dns zones with custom DNS it may be the domain name resolution that is failing instead of the peer connection. Changing to an exit node within the network or going from wifi to cellular does not resolve the connection issue.

4. How do you test it? Via browser or with a specific application?

The most relevant one to me is immich. I open the app at random times of the day, and lo and behold it can't reach the server.

5. What do you want to reach? A NetBird peer or a network behind a router, or are we talking about exit nodes?

A network on a routing peer that is mapped to a custom dns A record in a zone.

6. Are you using non default settings? I think of force relay mode and lazy connection.

I am using non default settings. Selfhosted server, rosenpass and rosenpass permissive mode enabled, inbound connections blocked, client routes blocked, server routes disabled, and ipv6 disabled, trace logs enabled, and nothing else currently enabled.
WRT Relay mode and lazy connection, I have tried a mixture of each with the latest (as of yesterday) being enabling lazy connection. I am unsure if force relay made a difference, but it seems like it might be more reliable with lazy connection on right now. I changed recently to the new app though, so I am unsure what is causing the difference I am seeing.

7. What is your device type? The different device providers are using different network related battery optimisations.

Samsung S24 Ultra. I think their background process management has gotten substantially more aggressive in recent years, so part of the blame may lie on their poor background task management. It keeps killing my logcat reader and making it incredibly difficult to capture logs from netbird beyond an hour before it seemingly kills it off in the background and leaves me with nothing. If you have any advice on apps or ways I can better capture the logs to my device or prevent the netbird app from getting killed off in the background, I'm all ears. I already have it set to battery unoptimized and set the app to be my always on VPN app.

Ill try to gather more information (and some actual logs rather than useless "here's what is happening") in the next few days, and report back if I am able to successfully gather anything

[pappz]

@WarmWelcome I progressed with your issues. You can follow the changes here:
Generate debug bundle to file
[client,android] Generate debug bundle to file
Add an anonymization level picker to the debug bundle screen
Log the tunnel build and DNS decisions for troubleshooting

And potentially this fix can help in your case:
Fix DoT, keep the tunnel resolver when Private DNS is in Automatic mode

After these changes have been merged, I will provide a new testable version

[WarmWelcome]

netbirdio/android-client#267

Thank you for this, following it.

After having used the new client since my review, it has properly maintained the connection from its end and seems to have resolved most of the issues I had with netbird on android before. What a fantastic improvement, thank you @pappz !

[pappz]

Thank you for the feedback!