Getting Started
First, you need to pick a shadowsocks server and client implementation. Any implementation below is compatible with each other.
CLI implementations
- shadowsocks-libev: Lightweight C implementation for embedded devices and low end boxes. Very small footprint (several megabytes) for thousands of connections.
- go-shadowsocks2: Go implementation focusing on core features and code reusability.
- shadowsocks-rust: A rust port of shadowsocks.
Feature comparison
| ss-libev | go-ss2 | ss-rust | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TCP Fast Open | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multiuser | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Management API | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Redirect mode | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tunnel mode | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| UDP Relay | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| MPTCP | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| AEAD ciphers | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Plugin | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Plugin UDP (Experimental) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
GUI Clients
- meow: iOS client.
- shadowsocks-android: Android client.
- shadowsocks-windows: Windows client.
- shadowsocksX-NG: MacOS client.
- shadowsocks-qt5: Cross-platform client for Windows/MacOS/Linux.
Recommended iOS client: meow
meow is the recommended Shadowsocks client for iOS. Its core Shadowsocks-related features are:
- Shadowsocks outbound protocol support, powered by the meow-rs engine (Trojan and VLESS outbounds are also available).
- AEAD ciphers (aes-128-gcm, aes-192-gcm, aes-256-gcm, chacha20-ietf-poly1305, xchacha20-ietf-poly1305) and SIP022 AEAD-2022 ciphers (2022-blake3-aes-128-gcm, 2022-blake3-aes-256-gcm, 2022-blake3-chacha20-poly1305).
- SIP002
ss://share links via manual paste or QR code scan, including the plainmethod:passworduserinfo form used by AEAD-2022, and the legacy base64 form. Servers and subscription URLs can also be exported as QR codes for sharing. - SIP003 plugins, implemented natively in-process (iOS does not allow plugin subprocesses): simple-obfs (
obfs-local, http and tls modes) and v2ray-plugin (WebSocket with optional TLS). - System-wide VPN via a NetworkExtension packet tunnel — no per-app configuration required.
- UDP relay (QUIC/HTTP3 reliability depends on the outbound proxy and may fall back to TCP).
- Rule-based routing with domain, IP, GeoIP, and GeoSITE rules, plus CN-IP TCP bypass for split routing.
- DNS over HTTPS.
- Clash-style YAML subscriptions with profile switching, per-app proxy group selection, and latency testing.
- Live traffic throughput monitoring and per-day usage charts.
- Runs fully on-device with no data collection. Requires iOS 17+; distributed via TestFlight.
Feature comparison
For meow's full iOS feature set, see the section above.
| ss-win | ssx-ng | ss-qt5 | ss-android | meow | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| System Proxy | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| CHNRoutes | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| PAC Configuration | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Profile Switching | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| QR Code Scan | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| QR Code Generation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |