Yesterday, Orbot iOS 1.3.0 was released. This is a major update and it contains a whole new bunch of features.

The most interesting one for other app developers, though, is this: You can now interact with Orbot in 2 ways:

• Interact with the Orbot UI via a scheme handler.
• Get status and circuit information via a REST API.

We even released a CocoaPods library, so you don’t have to mess with the low-level stuff yourself!

With the help of that, you can now implement apps, which are relying on Orbot:

• You can check, if it’s „VPN“ component (the Network Extension) is running, and if not, start it. (You’re not allowed to stop it, though for security concerns. Sorry…)
• You can get notified, when the connection status changes e.g. to change your app’s settings or to stop any requests to make sure, nothing runs over the clearnet.
• You can ask to bypass Orbot’s Tor, e.g. when your app runs its own Tor.

We’re excited to see apps emerging which make use of that! If you come up with something, which is not supported, yet, please let us know on the issue tracker. We’ll be happy to add everything you’ve got a convincing use case for!

If you now wonder, what’s the possibilities, check out the OrbotKit README, the extensive class documentation and run the example!