Upgrade note: Your firewall rules will be kept, but GUI settings will be lost after upgrading from an earlier version.
TinyWall 3.0 is a major upgrade that focuses on a complete overhaul of the firewall engine and its capabilities. This allows multiple new features to be added in the current release, resolves previous known issue, and paves the way for future enhacements. The GUI is left mostly intact on the surface, but has also seen multiple fine-tunings and improvements. Some of the major improvements in version 3.0 include:
Independence from Windows (Defender) Firewall. TinyWall 3.0 is now a standalone firewall that can be run without or side-by-side with Windows' own built-in firewall.
Enhanced security through boot-time filtering. Firewall rules are in effect even before TinyWall is loaded on boot, right from the start of the networking stack.
Support for and automatic handling of UWP applications.
Added raw- and promiscous-socket filtering, undermining apps that try to monitor or create raw network traffic.
Full support for Windows File Sharing. The workaround that used to exist for earlier Tinywall versions is no longer necessary.
Resolved issue where running apps are disconnected when firewall protection feature is triggered.
Support for automatically allowing child-processes of whitelisted executables. For instance, this simplifies whitelisting most online installers, among many other cases.
No need for the Connections window to be open anymore to register and list a blocked connection. A blocked connection will be listed even if the window is opened in hindsight.
Over a dozen user interface improvements, ranging from bugfixes to new hotkeys, better performance, unified batch operations, more useful defaults etc.
Revised installer with an updated look, option to specify installation path, increased security, and faster installation times.
... and many more improvements listed in the
full changelog.
Some features have been removed in this update:
Windows Vista is no longer supproted.
32-bit versions of Windows are no longer supported.
Whitelisting executables that are located on network shares is not supported.