OpenConnect

OpenConnect is an open-source client for SSL VPNs, the kind companies and universities often use. If your organisation tells you to install Cisco AnyConnect, GlobalProtect or FortiClient, there’s a good chance OpenConnect can connect to the same gateway. The project stresses that it isn’t supported by or associated with any of those vendors.

Supported VPN types

From its F-Droid description and the app’s own protocol list:

• Cisco AnyConnect, and ocserv, the open-source OpenConnect server
• Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect
• Fortinet SSL VPN
• Pulse Connect Secure and Juniper Network Connect
• F5 BIG-IP SSL VPN and Array SSL VPN

It supports SSL VPNs only, not the IPsec/IKE VPNs that Cisco’s older VPN Client used.

Setting it up

You need an account on a VPN server. For most gateways you create a profile and enter the server’s hostname; for Juniper and GlobalProtect you also pick the protocol in the profile. If your organisation issued a certificate, import it as a P12 or PFX file. Once saved, a profile connects with one tap, and it can generate RSA SecurID and TOTP codes for two-factor logins. Version 1.12 added a custom SNI option, a DTLS switch and Android TV support.

About this file

• F-Droid built it from source and publishes it with the developer’s own signature, after confirming its build matches.
• The project says there is no official OpenConnect app on Google Play, and it warns that some Play apps claiming to be OpenConnect aren’t from the project.
• Development is slow: 1.12 came out in early 2025, and the previous release was from 2019. F-Droid points users of the older OpenConnect app, which is no longer developed, to this one.
• The 31.5 MB file has native code for 32- and 64-bit ARM and x86, needs Android 6.0 or later, and declares five permissions.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi; x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).