WarDriving & Tethering

WiFi WarDriving

2025-11-28

No, it's not about "war games" (and also not about tanks – unless they are designed as WiFi APs). Wikipedia defines the term "Wardrive" as follows:

Wardriving is the act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless networks by a person in a moving vehicle, using a portable computer, smartphone or personal digital assistant (PDA).
Wardriving originated from wardialing, a method popularized by a character played by Matthew Broderick in the film WarGames, and named after that film. War dialing consists of dialing every phone number in a specific sequence in search of modems.

There are also indications for a backronym being involved: Wireless Access Revolution, to take away the martial touch from the term. In short: goal of the game is to collect APNs of a given area on a map.

So the goal is to show found networks on a map, or provide this data to projects like OpenCellId or Mozilla Location Service. Comparable apps for cell towers can be found in Monitoring & Mapping.

OpenWLANMini (4.7@20) 8 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2016-01-04 / OpenWLANMap (4.2@74) 11 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2020-05-09 Wikipedia DE; Intro 5/2018
Wifi Collector (4.1@506) 5 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2019-04-13
Opensignal - 5G, 4G Speed Test (4@447,058) Ǥ 10 3 Wikipedia
WiGLE WiFi Wardriving (3.8@4,924) Ǥ 25 Github; Intro & Howto 8/2017; Tutorial 6/2020; Wikipedia EN
Mozilla Stumbler (3.8@1,527) 10 1 LastUpdate: 2019-04-06 Github; Intro 8/2016; Data gathering for Mozilla Location Service
G-MoN (3.3@4,916) Ǥ 13 4 LastUpdate: 2020-03-29

Tethering

WiFi Tethering

2025-11-28

Starting with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), this comes as a stock-feature, and no longer requires additional apps. Unless your manufacturer removed the feature …

TetherFi (4.4@2,144) Ǥ 14 1 Github; no root required
NetShare - no-root-tethering (4.1@47,755) Ǥ 12 1 Video Howto 11/2017 (Text); Anleitung 2/2019; can act as WiFi repeater
TetherSetting | free tethering (3.4@760) 4 4 LastUpdate: 2020-05-20 no root required
FoxFi (WiFi Tether w/o Root) (3.3@15) 10 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2017-12-18

Bluetooth Tethering

2025-11-28

PdaNet+ (4.3@84,246) 15 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2023-09-28 Review 7/2018; Howto 11/2019
FoxFi (WiFi Tether w/o Root) (3.3@15) 10 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2017-12-18
Easy Tether Lite (No root) (2.5@22,635) 6 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2018-12-07 / EasyTether Full (4@9,091) 5 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2023-08-24 / EasyTether Pro (4@2,277; ~EUR 10.75) 5 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2023-08-30

USB Tethering

2025-11-28

Quick USB Tethering Wifi (4.3@2,046) Ǥ 7 2
FoxFi (WiFi Tether w/o Root) (3.3@15) 10 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2017-12-18
Free USB Tethering (3.1@656) Ǥ 6 2 LastUpdate: 2018-09-17
USB Tethering (3@7,043) Ǥ 4 2
Easy Tether Lite (No root) (2.5@22,635) 6 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2018-12-07 / EasyTether Full (4@9,091) 5 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2023-08-24 / EasyTether Pro (4@2,277; ~EUR 10.75) 5 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2023-08-30
SimpleRT (0@0) 2 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2021-12-02 Github

USB Reverse Tethering

2025-11-28

Reverse Tethering NoRoot Free (4.3@1,017) Ǥ 9 1 LastUpdate: 2019-05-25
Reverse Tether [Trial] (2.4@694) 7 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2014-12-29

WiFi Tether Toggler (Android 2.2+)

2025-11-28

Locale Wifi Hotspot Plug-in (2@754) 3 $Contains no trackers known to us \o/$ LastUpdate: 2018-12-06

Further Readings:

11 Best Tethering Apps for Android (8/2021 - 6/2023)

2025-11-29

IzzyOnDroid