Shkarko ProxyBridge 4.1.0

🚀 ProxyBridge v4.1.0 (Windows)
This release brings a fully native GUI, domain-name rules, no more admin prompt on every launch, and a long list of stability and performance fixes for long-running sessions, VPNs, and heavy traffic.
✨ Major changes
🌐 Domain name support in proxy rules
Rules can now match domain names as well as IPs and ports, for example *.github.com, api.example.com, or *.company.local.
🖥️ Native Windows GUI (rewritten in C / Win32)
The Windows GUI has been completely rewritten from scratch. The previous GUI was built with C# + Avalonia. The new GUI is written entirely in native C using the Windows API, with no GUI frameworks or rendering libraries.
- ✅ Native Win32 GUI, written entirely in C
- ✅ No Avalonia, SkiaSharp, HarfBuzz, or .NET runtime
- ✅ Native Windows controls
- ✅ Faster startup, lower resource usage
- ✅ Simpler deployment
AI-assisted development: the initial implementation was generated with Claude Code. After that, the code was manually reviewed, refactored, optimized, debugged, security-reviewed, and integrated with the existing ProxyBridge codebase.
📦 Binary size
The previous GUI needed multiple runtime files: ProxyBridge.exe (GUI + .NET runtime), libSkiaSharp.dll, av_libglesv2.dll, and libHarfBuzzSharp.dll. The new GUI is a single native executable.

| Component | Previous | Now | Improvement |
| ------------------------------------- | -------- | ------ | -------------- |
| Windows GUI (EXE + runtime libraries) | 43.4 MB | 517 KB | ~98.8% smaller |
| Installer | 11.8 MB | 769 KB | ~93.5% smaller |

🧠 Memory usage

| | Previous | Now |
| ---------- | -------- | ------- |
| At startup | ~40 MB | ~2–3 MB |

That is about a 94% reduction at startup.
During use:
- Previous GUI: typically grew to 100–140 MB, and often kept growing over time.
- New GUI: peaks at about 30 MB during testing, frees temporary allocations aggressively, returns to about 2–5 MB after activity, and can idle at around 1 MB.
⚡ CPU usage
- Previous GUI: commonly 3–10% CPU during normal operation and idle periods.
- New GUI: about 40–55% lower CPU usage in the workloads tested so far.
Performance testing will continue across a wider range of systems.
🔓 No admin prompt on every launch
The packet engine now runs as a Windows service (ProxyBridgeSvc) set up by the installer. The GUI runs as a normal user and connects to the service.
🔍 Rules, proxy settings, and display
- Pick several process names in one rule (#196).
- Configurable DNS resolution in proxy settings (#177).
- Clearer SOCKS5 CONNECT failure log, with repeated errors collapsed. A failed handshake now resets the app's connection instead of leaving it hanging.
- DPI-aware layout and fonts, and adjustable text size (#190).
VPN Fixed
- Fixed redirected connections being dropped on VPN (Public network profile) connections. The installer now adds the firewall rule the relay needs. (Only tested with WireGuard)
🛠️ Fixes: long sessions, stability, performance
- Fixed the app silently stopping to proxy after hours or days of use. Stale per-port state and a capture-error spin were the causes (#205, #183, #190).
- Fixed the owner-process lookup returning nothing for new connections, which made matching traffic bypass the proxy as DIRECT without any notice (#205).
- Fixed the slowdown and high CPU/memory with many connections (#184, #213):
- The process lookup now uses WinDivert socket events instead of scanning the system TCP table.
- Relays run on a fixed pool of worker threads, so the thread count no longer grows with connections.
- Relay buffers follow active transfers, not open connections.
- Fixed UDP flows being misrouted after hours, and the per-packet cost of direct UDP (affected Discord voice and similar apps).
- Fixed short-lived connections being dropped, and failed packet re-injection is now logged.
- Fixed traffic to the proxy server itself being redirected into the proxy (a stale-port collision).
- Fixed proxy rules pointing at the wrong proxy after deleting and re-adding a proxy (#203).
- Fixed a stale direct-connection entry that survived the connection closing (#206).
- Fixed the service crashing every time the GUI disconnected.
- The CLI no longer blocks the engine's capture thread on console output.
- Fixed the empty white area in the rules list (#200), the startup task now removed on uninstall (#199), the installer closes the app safely and launches it after install (#198), the startup tray delay (#195), and a profile buffer overflow.
⚠️ Notes
- Windows asks for admin once, during install, when the service is created.
- If you hit a problem, please include your Windows version, the ProxyBridge version, steps to reproduce, and logs or screenshots.