Support

Who pays for the server?

You do, directly to your cloud provider. A Hetzner server of the size OwnTunnel creates costs roughly €5.50 a month in Europe and roughly €17.50 a month in the United States — the location you pick decides, and it decides the included traffic too: the European locations come with 22 TB a month, while the American ones include around 1.1 TB and Singapore as little as 0.5 TB, with every further terabyte charged. Prices are the provider’s, quoted before VAT, and can change; the current ones are on Hetzner’s price page. Hetzner currently advertises €20 of credit for new accounts; whether you get it, and how far it goes, is the provider’s call and depends on the location you pick. OwnTunnel itself is free: no subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, and we take no share of what you pay your provider.

How do I delete my server?

Log in to your cloud provider’s console — for Hetzner that is console.hetzner.cloud — open the project you used, and delete the server there. Servers created by the app carry the label owntunnel, so they are easy to spot. Deleting the OwnTunnel app does not delete your server, and a server keeps billing until you delete it. If setup was interrupted halfway, OwnTunnel asks about the leftover server at the next launch and can delete it for you.

Where is my configuration stored?

On your device, in encrypted storage, and nowhere else. On iOS and macOS the configuration (including your WireGuard private key) and your cloud API token live in the Keychain with the AfterFirstUnlockThisDeviceOnly protection class: not synchronised to iCloud Keychain and excluded from device backups, encrypted ones included. A third copy lives in a shared Keychain group so the VPN system extension — a separate process iOS requires to run the tunnel — can read it. On Android the same two secrets are written as encrypted files in the app’s own private storage using Jetpack Security’s EncryptedFile, with the key that decrypts them generated on the device and held in the Android Keystore; allowBackup="false" and the app’s data-extraction rules keep both files out of cloud backup and out of device-to-device transfer. On either platform, Your data → Forget this configuration erases all of it, plus the VPN profile in system settings, and tells you if any part of that erasure failed.

Why scan a QR code?

Because copying a WireGuard configuration between devices by hand is where things break: a line break lost in the paste, a key truncated. If you already run a server, its configuration can be shown as a QR code (qrencode does it, and most WireGuard servers can produce one), and the scanner reads it in one shot. The camera frames are analysed on the device — by the system’s built-in code detector on iOS, and by ZXing, an open-source decoder compiled into the app, on Android — so nothing is written to disk, saved to your photo library or sent anywhere, and if you decline camera access you can paste the configuration as text instead. There is no scanner on macOS: the system code detector does not work there, so the Mac app never asks for camera access.

Which platforms are supported?

iOS 16 or later and macOS 13 Ventura or later, from one codebase, using the official WireGuardKit, plus Android 8.0 or later as a full Kotlin build. Neither is downloadable yet: iOS and macOS 1.0 are in review at the App Store, and Android 1.1 is in review at Google Play. On Windows and Linux there is no OwnTunnel app: export or scan the configuration and import it into the official WireGuard client, which speaks exactly the same standard. WireGuard is the only protocol, on purpose.

Something is not working

Check first that the server exists and is running in your provider’s console, that your API token has read and write scope, and that your cloud account has been verified — new accounts often cannot create anything until the provider verifies them. If the tunnel still refuses to come up, write to us with what you did and what you saw; there is no account for us to look up, so a description is all we have to work with.