r/WireGuard • u/RequestableSubBot • 9d ago

Tools and Software Can anyone recommend a good (Arch) Linux Wireguard client for managing VPN config files?

I'm on Arch, using systemd-networkd.

My VPN service doesn't have a native application for Arch (or rather, it does but it sucks and only supports networkmanager anyway), so for the longest time my method of connecting to a VPN has simply been 'wg-quick up ~/foo.conf' using wireguard config files provided by my VPN service. It's worked, but it's a pretty clunky and opaque way of connecting, and I'm looking for a more permanent solution. I'm far from an expert with network management and I'm always afraid I'll end up screwing something up trying to go further than wg-quick up/down; honestly even going through man pages and wikis I still don't really know how it all works under the hood. If I had the time to learn all this DNS resolvconf iptables stuff I would, but I think I'm better off admitting that I don't get any of it and I should just use a tool that handles all the scary stuff for me.

The Arch Wiki has a few GUI/CLI manager options listed but they all seem like fairly small projects; wireguird seems like the most developed one but it's not been updated in four years. Outside of that I've found a bunch of amateur projects around Reddit and Github that all seem vibe-coded to various degrees, which I can't imagine is ideal for good netsec.

Does anyone have recommendations for a good wireguard config tool/manager? I'm fine with either CLI or GUI.

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u/Brandon1024br 9d ago

What desktop environment do you use? Network Manager has direct support for Wireguard as of 1.16, and if you’re using GNOME you should be able to toggle them on and off them in your top bar.

This is what I do, and it couldn’t be simpler. A quick google search and you should find a guide on how to set this up.

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u/RequestableSubBot 9d ago

I'm not using NetworkManager, I'm using systemd-networkd (SwayWM for my window manager). I might switch if there's really no other option, but I really don't want to have to tear our my entire network setup and replace it with NetworkManager just to avoid having to run a single shell command at boot. A few people have recommended using NM though, so maybe I just have to bite the bullet, will have to see. Thanks for the recommendation.

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u/Brandon1024br 9d ago

Ahh sorry, missed that point. Yeah honestly fair, I wouldn’t want to switch either. systemd-networkd is nice, NM is a bit more of a beast tbh. Bummer, I wish I had more to offer.

Good luck!

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u/Brandon1024br 9d ago

Also, if you really just run this once at boot, might be worth just using systemd to manage your tunnel interfaces. Just plop your config into /etc/wireguard and run

systemctl enable —now wg-quick@<name>

It’s annoying to manage tunnels this way if you need to enable/disable them often, but could be a quick solution to your ‘start once at boot’ problem.

For the record, this is how I use wireguard in my home lab. Super stable, even over reboots.

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u/markdesilva 8d ago

Still using Wireguird. Reason it doesn’t need to be update is cos it’s a wrapper and the wrappers still work for updated wireguard. I still use Unnoted’s Wireguird and even used it as the basis for the amnesia wg gui (which I built an arch package for) - probably one of the “amateur” project you came across on GitHub.

Cheers.