DNS Hop

Modern DNS benchmark and resolver-switcher for Windows and Linux. Built with C#, .NET 8 and Avalonia + FluentAvalonia.

What it does

DNS Hop helps you pick a fast, honest DNS resolver and apply it to your system without leaving the app.

• Benchmarks public resolvers across classic UDP/TCP, DoH and DoT
• Surfaces three timing probes (cached, uncached, DotCom) plus reliability checks for DNSSEC, NXDOMAIN hijacking and dead servers
• Applies the resolver you pick directly to the active system adapter on Windows or Linux
• Verifies what actually went through with a DNS leak test
• Speaks five languages out of the box

v2 highlights

The whole shell was redesigned in v2 around the Windows 11 25H2 Settings aesthetic:

• FluentAvalonia NavigationView with a left rail: Home, Benchmark, Resolvers, Results, Profiles, Network, Logs, Settings, About
• Mica backdrop on Windows 11 when you stay on the System theme; solid backgrounds in Light/Dark so the title bar and sidebar match the rest of the UI
• DNS Profiles — save preferred + alternate pairs for IPv4 + IPv6 and apply with one click. Built-in profiles: Cloudflare Privacy, Quad9 Secure, AdGuard Family, Mullvad, Google
• Geo-aware recommendations that bias the resolver list toward your region (Cloudflare CDN trace, country-only, six-hour cache, no precise geolocation)
• Curated resolver metadata — operator, country, no-log policy, ad/malware/adult filtering surfaced as badges
• DNS leak test via whoami.cloudflare so you can verify your active resolver
• Apply history keeps the last five applied configurations with a one-click "Restore previous"
• Results page with two recommendation cards (Primary / Secondary) and per-row latency bars
• Logs page with severity colours, level filters, search and export
• Five languages out of the box (English, German, French, Russian, Simplified Chinese) with reactive switching — no restart

Get it

Latest release: https://github.com/center2055/DNS-Hop/releases/latest

Each release ships:

Asset	Platform
DNS-Hop-Setup-vX.Y.exe	Windows installer
DNS-Hop-Portable-vX.Y.zip	Windows portable
DNS-Hop-AppImage-vX.Y-x86_64.AppImage	Linux AppImage

Build from source

Requires the .NET 8 SDK.

dotnet restore
dotnet build DNSHop.sln
dotnet run --project src/DNSHop.App/DNSHop.App.csproj

Self-contained Windows release

dotnet publish src/DNSHop.App/DNSHop.App.csproj `
  -c Release `
  -r win-x64 `
  --self-contained true `
  /p:PublishSingleFile=true `
  /p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true `
  -o artifacts/publish-win-x64-release

# portable zip
.\scripts\package-win-portable.ps1 -PublishDir artifacts\publish-win-x64-release -ProjectPath src\DNSHop.App\DNSHop.App.csproj

# installer (Inno Setup 6)
& "C:\Path\To\Inno Setup 6\ISCC.exe" installer\DNSHop.iss

Self-contained Linux AppImage

./scripts/publish-linux-appimage.sh
# Produces artifacts/DNSHop-linux-x86_64.AppImage

The Linux AppImage is also built by CI on every push to main and attached to GitHub Releases on every v* tag — see .github/workflows/linux-appimage.yml. The matrix smoke-tests the bundled binary on Debian 12, Fedora 41 and Arch using DNSHop.App --smoke-test.

Project layout

src/DNSHop.App/
├── App.axaml(.cs)             FluentAvalonia bootstrap + DI
├── Program.cs                 Entry point, command-line dispatch
├── Localization/              i18n service, markup extension
├── Models/                    DnsServerDefinition, DnsProfile, etc.
├── Services/                  Benchmark, ServerList, SystemDns, Profiles, LeakTest, Geo, Metadata
├── Styles/                    Theme + card styles
├── ViewModels/
│   ├── ShellViewModel.cs      Navigation rail + active page
│   └── Pages/                 One VM per nav item
├── Views/
│   ├── ShellWindow.axaml      Main window (NavigationView + Mica)
│   └── Pages/                 One view per nav item
└── Assets/
    ├── i18n/                  Per-culture JSON dictionaries
    └── resolver-metadata.json Curated operator / region / no-log info

System DNS switching

• Windows: classic UDP/TCP IPv4 + IPv6 endpoints on port 53. Profiles apply preferred + alternate via netsh.
• Linux: tries NetworkManager (nmcli) and systemd-resolved first; falls back to writing /etc/resolv.conf.
• WSL: writes /etc/resolv.conf. For changes to survive a restart, set [network] generateResolvConf=false in /etc/wsl.conf. WSLg is required for the GUI.

Diagnostics

• Logs are written to %LOCALAPPDATA%\DNS Hop\Logs on Windows and $HOME/.local/share/DNS Hop/Logs on Linux.
• The in-app Logs page parses these with severity colouring and supports filter + export.
• DNSHop.App --smoke-test runs a quick non-UI sanity pass and prints version, platform and the active diagnostics log path. This is what the CI matrix uses.

Notes

• Custom resolver entries you add in Resolvers persist in settings.json under %LOCALAPPDATA%\DNS Hop\.
• The "Update public list on launch" option pulls a small additional set of resolvers from https://public-dns.info. Turn it off if you only want the curated built-in list.
• Exports land in Documents\DNSHop\Exports.
• Translations live in src/DNSHop.App/Assets/i18n/<culture>.json. PRs adding more languages are welcome.