I want a firewall app for just basically to enforce restrictions on outgoing communication based on service or app. It is mostly to block data harvesting. For reference, if anyone remembers there was one for iPhone called Firewall IP and it was just perfection. That was back when we could jailbreak.
Anyway, so that's all I need. Free is best, of course, but I would pay a bit if it is an exceptionally good product. No problem paying for quality. But I will have no interest in anything that's subscription based, nor anything that I need some kind of backend "approval" or login in order to install and use it. In other words, I want to know that if in a hundred years I happen to have a working phone from today, and the apk file, then I can install it. Obviously that's reductoi ad absurdum but you get my point.
Thanks for any recommendations.
P.S. I'm not rooted, if that matters. Although I am still interested in possibly getting a replacement ROM for my device.
Additionally to NetGuard, you also can use RethinkDNS, it does the same thing as NetGuard with a local DNS for ad blocking and some other advanced stuff.
It gives seperate control over WiFi and cell. So for example my weather widget won't update in background over cell, but on WiFi it can update all day.
Only downside is it takes up your 1 VPN "slot", which might be a bad thing if you a vpn.
Are there any system apps that are worth blocking that won't make my phone less useful? Kind of an ambiguous question, I know. I just blocked GBoard, for one.
Oh, never mind. It uses a pseudo VPN to filter traffic, and I'm using an actual VPN, so its not compatible. I only learned this after setting up some rules and finally trying to enable it.
It'd be cool if they integrated a VPN client into the app.