Shadowsocks TV

Shadowsocks TV is the Android TV part of the official Shadowsocks for Android project. Shadowsocks is an encrypted proxy protocol, but this app is not a VPN subscription and contains no server. It can connect only after you supply a working Shadowsocks profile.

The project also has a phone and tablet client. They share the connection service, but their controls are not the same. In the TV source for this version we found a remote-friendly profile list and JSON import and export, not the phone app’s subscription manager or full profile editor. Upstream phone variants can scan QR codes, but the F-Droid phone APK hosted here removes that scanner.

Set it up on a TV

Prepare a JSON file containing your own profiles, copy it somewhere the TV can open and choose Replace from file… while disconnected. This replaces the TV app’s existing profile list rather than merging one entry at a time, so export the current list first if you may need it. Android opens its document picker; on some TVs you may need a file-manager app before you can browse to the file. Opening an ss:// link is the separate append path. If you export from the phone app, turn off per-app routing first: its proxy_apps value is imported but the TV interface cannot display or change it.

After import, the TV screen lets you:

• choose the active profile and connect or disconnect;
• see the server name and address, any plugin and the traffic used by each profile;
• run the app’s connection test;
• see sent and received traffic while the service is running; and
• export the profile list back to JSON.

After you enable Auto Connect in settings—it is off by default—the app can reconnect after the TV starts or the package is updated. That is different from supplying a server: the imported profile still has to be valid and reachable.

Connection modes

The settings expose the same three service modes as the project’s connection core:

• VPN is the default. Android presents Shadowsocks as a VPN and sends device traffic into it without root.
• Proxy only starts local proxy services for software that is configured to use them itself.
• Transproxy is for a transparent-proxy setup and is not the normal choice for an unmodified television.

There are also local SOCKS5, DNS and transparent-proxy port settings and a Share over LAN switch. Enabling LAN sharing makes the local proxy reachable by other devices on the same network; leave it off unless you deliberately need that and understand who can reach the TV.

Android allows only one active VPN connection. When Shadowsocks TV runs in VPN mode, another VPN or local-VPN firewall cannot use the slot at the same time. The TV interface also does not expose the phone build’s per-app routing controls, so do not install it expecting to pick individual television apps from a list.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s build of 5.3.5-nightly, signed with F-Droid’s key. The version name says nightly, but the project’s matching GitHub tag is published as a regular release.
• F-Droid builds the television module and removes the project’s Firebase, Google services and mobile-only modules. Our APK scan found no tracker libraries.
• Version 5.3.5 includes a DNS fix for some devices such as OnePlus 12 on Android 15, prepares the VPN service before connecting and displays the server address when a profile name is missing. We verified the code and package, not a connection to a real server or a particular TV model.
• The 14.5 MB APK needs Android 6.0 or later, contains native code for ARM and x86 in both 32- and 64-bit forms and declares 12 permissions.
• No version-matched TV screenshots were available from the project or F-Droid, so this page does not substitute phone screenshots for a different interface.
• The app is licensed under GPL-3.0 or later.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.