Rowa — Router Manager

Rowa is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by OpenWrt, AdGuard Home, Tailscale, GL.iNet or Telegram.

Rowa turns your own router into something you can actually see and steer, from your phone.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

• See every device on the network, grouped by how it connects and under the name it announces for itself — what it is, and how much it is pulling right now.
• Cut the internet for one device with a tap, and give it back the same way.
• Deny a device the router altogether when cutting the internet is not enough: nothing forwarded, no address handed out.
• Schedule those cuts by day and hour. Useful for a child's tablet at bedtime.
• Block websites for one device only, with rules pinned to its hardware address.
• See how much data went out today, or over 7, 30, 90 or 365 days, counted on the router itself.
• Measure the line itself: three seconds each way against the nearest speed test server.
• Change Wi-Fi names and passwords, quickly or in full detail, and read every change before it is applied.
• Watch the mobile link on a router with a SIM: signal graded on RSRP, SINR and RSRQ, band, carrier, data used — and read or send SIM messages.
• Set up a new router’s connection in a few steps; see every uplink at once, including one ready but not in use; switch an Ethernet port between WAN and LAN.
• Get told when the router drops off the network or loses mains power, when the battery runs low, when an unknown device joins, when a text arrives or when the public address changes — in a Telegram bot of your own that also answers questions and can reboot the router, and, if you unlock it, on your phone with Rowa closed, which also covers a router gone quiet.
• Block ads for the whole house through AdGuard Home, if your router has it.
• Combine several uplinks — balance traffic across fibre, mobile and Wi-Fi repeater, reorder their priority, or fail over between them.
• Restart the router on a schedule.
• See real CPU use on every core and which processes are eating it — named in plain language — and end one from the app.
• Set the fan on a router that has one: quiet, medium, maximum, or left to the kernel.
• Reach the router from anywhere over Tailscale, with no Tailscale app to install.

FREE, AND STAYING FREE

Router status, the device list, cutting and restoring internet by hand, data usage, the process list, fan control, Wi-Fi, alerts while the app is open, Telegram alerts, SIM messages and the diagnostics report cost nothing, now or later.

Seven advanced features are free for 30 days, then a single purchase unlocks them for good — no subscription, nothing to renew:

• Scheduled cuts by the hour
• Ad blocking (needs AdGuard Home)
• Per-device website blocking
• Multi-WAN load balancing
• Automatic cache trimming
• Scheduled router reboots
• Alerts with the app closed

WHAT YOU NEED

• A router running OpenWrt 22.03 or newer (or GL.iNet firmware 4.x) that you administer; 21.02 works once nftables is installed. It can route for the whole house, or just serve Wi-Fi as an access point.
• The first pairing has to happen on the same Wi-Fi as the router: Rowa shows you the router's certificate fingerprint and trusts only that one afterwards.
• Rowa installs a small helper on the router the first time, with your permission and your own SSH password. There is a button to remove it again.

PRIVACY

Your router password and SSH key never leave your phone — they live in the Keychain and go only to your own router. There are no ads, no analytics, and no account to create. The diagnostics report is never sent anywhere on its own: you see all of it first and choose who gets it.

Rowa works with routers running OpenWrt (openwrt.org), and with the optional packages AdGuard Home (adguard.com) and Tailscale (tailscale.com) where they are installed. Telegram (telegram.org) is a service the router sends alerts to, not a package on it. Those are separate projects and services; Rowa is not one of them.