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IIRC it needs the camera only to import configs using QR codes. I import configs as files, so I disable camera access, and everything works fine.

One more tip from my experience: AmneziaWG with AirVPN worked great until about two months ago when I started noticing degradation in website responsiveness, especially for the first connect to any domain, while the download speeds remained great. About a week ago the browsing experience became so bad (TLS handshakes started to timeout), so I had to look into this problem. I quickly found out that the problem was caused by slow DNS response when it was done through AirVPN's native DNS server and only when using IPv4. I don't know where this problem comes from exactly, but the solution was to install dnsproxy (which is smaller and easier to setup than dnscrypt-proxy) and set it up to use the 3rd party DNSCrypt servers. The problem is not present with WG Tunnel for Android, I presume because it uses IPv6. I plan to try to set up IPv6 on my home PC as well but my ISP provides only IPv4, so I'll probably have to use some IPv6-to-IPv4 tunnel.

Hello I would like to give my personal recommendations to help with network censorship in Russia. I may not have time to write a authoritative, proper guide, but wanted to share this. Everything "clicked" once I read a comment how the DPI works to determine a new connection. Preface IP and subnet blocks came first. They completely blackhole all traffic to blocked IP addresses. The only thing you can try is IPv6 in place of IPv4. Some Air servers are blocked by IP. The Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is a required installation for residential ISPs and (as of late) industrial networks like data centers. It works to dynamically block known protocol traffic, anything "forbidden" that's not yet in IP blocklists from above. This system was put in law many years ago. Nevertheless, the networks across the country are at various stages of rollout and their capabilities will differ. Real example: residential ISP did not block OpenVPN->Air, yet the mobile carrier did. Yet in 2024 the residential ISP upgraded their DPI system and started blocking OpenVPN too. Common methods of circumvention Mangle traffic locally to fool the DPI systems. It will allow you to connect to servers not blocked by IP (TLS SNI name detection). Proxy/VPN server: A prerequisite is an outside server, it must not have been blocked by IP. If it's a private server and OpenVPN or Wireguard work - you're lucky. However be prepared to still get blocked by DPI any day for using a VPN protocol. There are many proxy tools, especially developed to combat the Great Firewall of China. They don't run directly on Air, so this is something for self-hosting or other services to provide. We're talking about Air, so let's get that VPN working. Everything below requires you to find a reachable Air server (no direct IP blocks). The configuration server used by Eddie is IP blocked, so it won't work at all. I suggest you to generate all server configs in advance and see which are reachable from Russian networks. Airvpn.org seems to be reachable though. OpenVPN over SSH to Air It is possible to set this up on mobile, however the connection is reset after 10-30 seconds due to a lot of traffic being pushed. I used ConnectBot and it didn't restart the SSH connection properly, anyhow OpenVPN and ConnectBot had to be reconnected manually each time --> unusable. Since both apps are easily downloadable from app stores/F-Droid, this can be enough to generate and download configs from AirVPN's website in a dire situation. This connection type works like this: SSH connects to Air server, forwards a local port -> Air (internal_ip:internal_port) OpenVPN connects to local_ip:local_port and SSH sends the packets to Air's OpenVPN endpoint inside this tunnel Once the connection is established, it works like a regular OpenVPN on your system OpenVPN over stunnel to Air I haven't tried, desktop only? OpenVPN (TCP) over Tor to Air While connecting to Tor will be another adventure, do you really need a VPN if you get Tor working for browsing? If yes, I suppose it could work. I haven't tried. OpenVPN (TCP) to Air May start working after hours on Android, if the connection was established initially. Until then you'll see a lot of outgoing traffic but almost zero incoming traffic (NOT ZERO though!) It is unclear to me whether this is because Android keeps reconnecting after sleeping or sometimes it pushes so little traffic over the established connection that DPI forgets or clears the block for this connection only. OpenVPN (UDP) to Air Doesn't work. Wireguard to Air Doesn't work, it's always UDP and very easily detected. AmneziaWG client to connect to standard Wireguard Air servers This worked for me almost flawlessly. The trick of AmneziaWG is to send random trash packets before starting the connection sequence. This is what the new parameters are and some of them are compatible with standard Wireguard servers. The DPI only checks traffic within the initial traffic size window of the connection. If it doesn't find VPN connection signatures (and it doesn't due to random data) then it whitelists the connection. Wireguard then sends its connection packets and connects to Air. Full speed ahead, no throttling. The VPN connection works! What's the catch? The AmneziaWG packet configuration must be right. This worked for me across all networks I encountered: MTU: 1320 (safe value, higher MTU will give better bandwidth, if it works at all and doesn't begin to fragment packets) Junk Packet count (Jc): 31 Junk Packet minimum size (Jmin): 20 Junk Packet maximum size (Jmax): 40 Init packet junk size (S1): none (afaik only with AmneziaWG server; delete from config or try to set 0) Response packet junk size (S2): none (afaik only with AmneziaWG server; delete from config or try to set 0) Magic header settings changeable afaik only with AmneziaWG server: Init packet magic header (H1): 1 Response packet magic header (H2): 2 Underload packet magic header (H3): 3 Transport packet magic header (H4): 4 Example: [Interface] ... other default values, including MTU ... Jc=31 Jmin=20 Jmax=40 H1=1 H2=2 H3=3 H4=4 And how would you know what numbers to set? This single insight: This means flooding small random UDP packets at the beginning is the winning strategy. That's how I optimized someone's config from "sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't" to "works 100% of the time, everywhere". You actually don't want to blast big packets and be blocked because of it. Smaller random packets are good for mobile traffic too. How would you setup AmneziaWG to connect to Air (Android)? Generate and download AirVPN Wireguard configs, for each individual server, try different entry IPs too. DO NOT USE THE DEFAULT (OFFICIAL) WIREGUARD PORT. We don't want long-term logging to highlight the working servers for the next round of IP blocks. Download AmneziaWG-Android VPN client (the Android edition is actually a fork of the official Wireguard app aka "AmneziaWG". Don't download their regular all-in-one client aka "AmneziaVPN"!): amnezia.org or https:// storage.googleapis .com/kldscp/amnezia.org or https://github.com/amnezia-vpn/amneziawg-android/releases Import Air's configs in the app Apply "Junk Packet" settings from above Try to connect Try different entry IPs and servers if the connection doesn't work. See if the server IP is completely blocked either with: ping "<entry IP>" nc -zv -w 10 "<entry IP>" "<port 80 or 2018 for OpenVPN TCP>" This is GNU netcat Keep in mind: on Android the safest way to avoid any traffic leaks is to go to system settings, Connection & sharing > VPN, or search for "VPN", click on (i) for advanced settings, Enable: "Stay Connected to VPN" & "Block All Connections not Using VPN". If you ever disconnect from VPN by using Android's system notification, you'll need to re-enable these settings. If you switch between VPN apps (like Eddie -> AmneziaWG), I suggest to make sure these settings are always enabled like this: Turn off Wi-Fi (or mobile data) For previous VPN app disable: "Stay Connected to VPN" & "Block All Connections not Using VPN" For next VPN app enable: "Stay Connected to VPN" & "Block All Connections not Using VPN" Turn on Wi-Fi / connect using next VPN app Android battery optimization: Finally, go to app's settings (or Settings-Battery then app list somewhere) and make sure the AmneziaWG app is "not optimized" for battery. This way it will not be interrupted in the background and potentially drop connection until the screen is awake. -- https://dontkillmyapp.com/ for guides and more info Thanks for reading. Big politicians are not your friends, stay strong and propagate what you truly believe in.