LiteVPN

English | 简体中文

A minimal, lightweight OpenVPN menu bar client for macOS — built as an alternative to the bulky OpenVPN Connect. Instant to open, light on memory, with no account system, no push notifications, and no update popups.

100% Swift, powered by TunnelKit — the pure-Swift OpenVPN protocol implementation that drives the open-source client Passepartout.

Features

• Lives in the menu bar (no Dock icon), one-click connect / disconnect
• .ovpn import: drag & drop onto the panel or use the file picker, validated at import time, multiple profiles
• Live status: connection duration, download / upload traffic
• Clash Compatible Mode: leaves the default route alone so it coexists with Clash TUN / system proxy (see below)
• Auto-reconnect on drops (built into TunnelKit), optional Launch at Login
• Tunnel runs in a separate Network Extension process — quitting the app keeps the connection alive
• Localized UI: English & 简体中文 (follows system language)
• Supabase-style light interface

Deliberately minimal: only certificate-embedded profiles (inline <ca> / <cert> / <key>) are supported. No username/password authentication.

Coexisting with Clash

Conflicts between VPN clients and Clash come down to who owns the routing table. With Clash Compatible Mode enabled:

• LiteVPN does not take over the default route; it only claims the specific subnets from your profile and server-pushed routes (e.g. 10.0.0.0/8)
• Traffic to VPN subnets goes through the OpenVPN tunnel; everything else flows through Clash as usual (TUN mode or system proxy)
• The routing table arbitrates by longest-prefix match — the two virtual interfaces never fight

Recommended Clash-side configuration:

rules:
  - IP-CIDR,<your-vpn-server-ip>/32,DIRECT   # keep the VPN handshake out of the proxy

If you access intranet services by domain name, add those domains to Clash's fake-ip-filter.

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────┐      ┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ LiteVPN.app (menu bar)  │      │ LiteVPNTunnel.appex          │
│ SwiftUI MenuBarExtra    │─────▶│ NEPacketTunnelProvider       │
│ NetworkExtensionVPN     │ NE   │ └─ TunnelKit OpenVPN engine  │
│ profiles/status/traffic │◀─────│    (protocol + data channel) │
└─────────────────────────┘ AppGroup └──────────────────────────┘

• The protocol engine surface is kept deliberately small (tunnel subclass + parser + connection manager), leaving room for a future WireGuard engine
• TunnelKit v6.3.2 is vendored at Vendor/tunnelkit/ with WireGuard stripped (upstream is archived and its wireguard-apple dependency repo was deleted, so remote references are no longer reliable) — see Vendor/tunnelkit/LITEVPN-MODIFICATIONS.md
• The crypto layer is pinned to the OpenSSL 3.5 LTS line (supported until April 2030) via .upToNextMinor, so dependency resolution only picks up 3.5.x patch releases and never drifts onto a short-lived release line

Building

Requirements: Xcode (full install), XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen), and a paid Apple Developer account (required for the Network Extension capability).

1. Use your own signing identity (two places):
   • project.yml → set DEVELOPMENT_TEAM to your Team ID
   • App/AppConstants.swift → update the Team ID prefix in appGroup
2. Generate the project and build:

xcodegen generate
open LiteVPN.xcodeproj   # Run in Xcode; automatic signing creates the profiles

Or from the command line:

xcodebuild -project LiteVPN.xcodeproj -scheme LiteVPN \
  -allowProvisioningUpdates -allowProvisioningDeviceRegistration build

On first connect macOS will ask to add a VPN configuration — allow it once.

No prebuilt binary is shipped. A macOS Network Extension app can't be distributed in a form that runs on arbitrary Macs without per-machine signing, so building from source with your own Apple Developer account (about 5 minutes) is the supported path.

Usage

1. Click the shield icon in the menu bar
2. Drag in your .ovpn file (or click "+ Import")
3. Hit Connect

Credits

• TunnelKit by Davide De Rosa — OpenVPN protocol engine
• OpenSSL — crypto layer (3.5 LTS)

License

GPL-3.0 (inherited from the TunnelKit engine).

Author

云中江树 (yzfly) · WeChat Official Account: 云中江树