GoKawiil[ANNOUNCE] WireGuardNT v0.11 and WireGuard for Windows v0.6 Released
Hey folks, I generally don't send announcement emails for the Windows software, because the built-in updater takes care of notifying the relevant users. But because this hasn't been updated in so long, and because of recent news articles, I thought it'd be a good idea to notify the list. After a lot of hardwork, we've released an updated Windows client, both the low level kernel driver and api harness, called WireGuardNT, and the higher level management software, command line utilities, and UI, called WireGuard for Windows. There are some new features -- such as support for removing individual allowed IPs without dropping packets (as was added already to Linux and FreeBSD) and setting very low MTUs on IPv4 connections -- but the main improvement is lots of accumulated bug fixes, performance improvements, and above all, immense code streamlining due to ratcheting forward our minimum supported Windows version [1]. These projects are now built in a much more solid foundation, without having to maintain decades of compatibility hacks and alternative codepaths, and bizarre logic, and dynamic dispatching, and all manner of crust. There have also been large toolchain updates -- the EWDK version used for the driver, the Clang/LLVM/MingW version used for the userspace tooling, the Go version used for the main UI, the EV certificate and signing infrastructure -- which all together should amount to better performance and more modern code. But, as it's our first Windows release in a long while, please test and let me know how it goes. Hopefully there are no regressions, and we've tested this quite a bit -- including on Windows 10 1507 Build 10240, the most ancient Windows that we support which Microsoft does not anymore -- but you never know. So feel free to write me as needed. As always, the built-in updater should be prompting users to click the update button, which will check signatures and securely update the software. Alternatively, if you're installing for the first time or want to update immediately, our mini 80k fetcher will download and verify the latest version: - https://download.wireguard.com/windows-client/wireguard-installer.exe - https://www.wireguard.com/install/ And to learn more about each of these two Windows projects: - https://git.zx2c4.com/wireguard-windows/about/ - https://git.zx2c4.com/wireguard-nt/about/ Finally, I should comment on the aforementioned news articles. When we tried to submit the new NT kernel driver to Microsoft for signing, they had suspended our account, as I wrote about first in a random comment [2] on Hacker News in a thread about this happening to another project, and then later that day on Twitter [3]. The comments that followed were a bit off the rails. There's no conspiracy here from Microsoft. But the Internet discussion wound up catching the attention of Microsoft, and a day later, the account was unblocked, and all was well. I think this is just a case of bureaucratic processes getting a bit out of hand, which Microsoft was able to easily remedy. I don't think there's been any malice or conspiracy or anything weird. I think most news articles currently circulating haven't been updated to show that this was actually fixed pretty quickly. So, in case you were wondering, "but how can there be a new WireGuard for Windows update when the account is blocked?!", now you know that the answer is, "because the account was unblocked." Anyway, enjoy the new software, and let me know how it works for you. Thanks, Jason [1] https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2026-March/009541.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687884 [3] https://x.com/EdgeSecurity/status/2041872931576299888