Many of us run their Lightning nodes on dedicated hardware at home. Thanks to projects like RaspiBlitz, Umbrel, myNode, Citadel and others this has become very simple and cheap to do. Setup your node, plug it into your router at home and you’re good to go. Typically these nodes connect to the network through Tor.

However, until today linking these nodes to the browser involved technical know-how and has been an endeavor. What sounds like a great solution poses challenges for browsers. To be able to connect to your node behind Tor you typically have to have a Tor client running on your computer to proxy the traffic from your browser. This is complicated and not practical for users.

That’s why we built the Alby App. It is your companion when you want to pair your remote node running behind Tor with the browser. The setup cannot be simpler: Just download and install it when you are asked so by the Alby extension.

The Alby App is open-source and currently in beta.