Mihomo Party Proxy Modes: Rule, Global, Direct, and TUN Step Guide

1. Modes vs Capture: What You Are Actually Changing

Mihomo Party sits on top of the mihomo engine, which is a policy router: it matches domains, IPs, processes, and ports against YAML rules, then sends each flow to an outbound such as a node group, a relay, or DIRECT. The familiar proxy mode switch changes that policy intent at a high level. Rule mode tells the core to respect your profile’s rule stack and policy groups. Global mode pushes matched traffic toward your global proxy selection rather than letting per-domain rules decide. Direct mode keeps the engine online but routes flows without selecting remote proxies useful when you need the client running for logs, DNS, or experiments, yet want ordinary internet egress.

None of those choices magically decides whether Firefox, Steam, or your terminal actually delivers bytes to the local listener. That is the job of capture. On desktop, capture is usually system proxy (the OS publishes loopback proxy endpoints) or TUN (a virtual adapter steers traffic into the engine). Because beginners stack the words together in forum posts, it is easy to assume “TUN equals global.” In practice, you might run rule mode under TUN for months and never touch global mode. Separating “how traffic enters mihomo” from “what rule set applies once inside” is the skill that turns random toggle flipping into predictable change control.

If you want the routing vocabulary in one place before you tune mode switches, skim the routing and rules reference on this site. It is not Mihomo Party–specific, but it explains why ordering matters and why a dramatic mode change can look like “DNS broke” when the real story is matcher priority inside your profile.

2. Where to Switch Modes in Mihomo Party

Releases evolve, yet the product pattern stays consistent: you will find a compact mode switch control near the dashboard or tray-facing home surface, often labeled with Rule, Global, and Direct (or icons that map to the same semantics). Treat that control as the fastest macro override on top of your YAML. Deeper surfaces still matter—policy groups, provider toggles, and per-rule overrides—but most people only need the tri-state for hourly life.

Pair the mode control with the capture toggles you already learned during install. If you have not walked those screens yet, complete a first-time pass on your operating system before you stress-test modes. For Windows 11, follow the Mihomo Party Windows 11 setup guide; for Windows 10, use the parallel Windows 10 article. macOS readers should keep system proxy permissions and any network-extension prompts in mind, using the Clash Verge Rev macOS proxy and TUN guide as a conceptual sibling for how Apple treats tunnels even when the skin of the app differs.

When you change modes, watch the log pane for a few seconds. Healthy switches produce concise lines that show the core reloading policy. If the UI animates but logs stay silent about policy, suspect that you are looking at a disconnected dashboard skin or a profile that failed to apply—fix that before blaming the internet.

3. Rule Mode: Split Routing for Real Life and Work

Rule mode is the default for people who subscribe to curated profiles. Airline dashboards, academic portals, bank sites, and local CDNs stay on logical direct paths while the destinations your profile marks as remote ride through node groups you control. That balance matters because blasting everything through an overseas hop is how you get captchas, payment risk scores, and video services that suddenly think you moved continents.

Developers live in rule mode more than they admit. APIs rarely need “global everything,” but package registries, Git hosts, and container mirrors often need deliberate policy lines. When something times out, resist the urge to jump to global mode first. Inspect whether the domain you care about is classified earlier in YAML than you thought, whether a GEOIP rule is wider than you remembered, or whether DNS fake-ip mapping disagreed with the browser cache you are staring at.

If you depend on private addresses or lab subnets, rule mode is where you notice missing DIRECT exceptions. Keep a small mental map of your profile’s first-match behavior: the engine is honest, but busy YAML can surprise you after an automatic subscription refresh introduces a heavier ruleset.

4. Global Mode: Force Everything Through Your Proxy Stack

Flip to global mode when you want the blunt instrument. Hotel Wi-Fi with broken DNS, a finicky SSO portal that fails half your split rules, or a last-minute demo where you cannot afford a stale matcher are all reasonable short-term excuses. Think of global mode as asking the core to stop negotiating with your rule file’s nuances and to ride the main proxy chain until you explicitly return to nuance.

The cost is real. Banking flows, payroll, and local government services may now share the same exit characteristics as your video streaming tab. Some sites respond by demanding extra verification. Others silently degrade because latency crosses awkward thresholds. That does not make global mode “bad”—it makes it a temporary knob, not a personality trait. Pair it with a trustworthy node group; if your group is unhealthy, global mode just fans the pain out across every destination at once instead of isolating it to the domains your rules intentionally pushed abroad.

Set a literal timer on your phone if you must. Many “mysterious slowdown for a week” stories are just someone’s forgotten global mode toggle after a late-night debugging session.

5. Direct Mode: Keep the Client Alive While You Bypass Proxies

Direct mode confuses newcomers because it sounds like “exit the app.” It is closer to “run the engine in transparency mode.” Profiles still load, logs still stream, and DNS hooks you carefully tuned may still apply depending on YAML, but the policy outcome is ordinary egress without pushing flows through remote outbounds governed by global mode semantics. That is invaluable when your employer VPN demands full attention, when campus captive portals punish tunnels, or when you are comparing baseline speeds without closing your tooling.

Because people conflate capture with mode, they sometimes enable TUN while also selecting direct mode and expect literal air-gapped isolation. The adapter might still exist; the policy simply states a different forwarding path. If you want the machine to behave as if Mihomo Party were fully absent, also disable capture toggles in a deliberate order once you understand what each surface controls.

Treat direct mode as your “undo global panic without quitting the GUI” lever. It is also a respectful choice on shared networks where prolonged tunneling is discouraged but you still want log visibility for a class lab or support ticket.

6. Using TUN With Rule, Global, or Direct

TUN solves capture problems, not vocabulary problems. When games, IDEs, or language runtimes ignore proxies, turning on TUN sends more traffic through the engine so your carefully maintained rules actually see the bytes. You can remain in rule mode while doing that—which is the normal power-user posture—or temporarily pair TUN with global mode when you lack time to chase a single stubborn matcher.

DNS becomes part of every conversation once TUN is on. If queries bypass your fake-ip assumptions or collide with OS resolver policies, you will see “works in browser, fails in CLI” patterns that look like mode bugs. Read the TUN mode overview for the cross-platform capture story, then cross-check your profile’s DNS stanza when symptoms persist across browsers and shells alike.

On Windows, expect elevation when drivers install or renew; declining leaves cheerful UI states with sad kernel reality. On macOS, approvals may reference system extensions or privacy categories that sound scarier than they are. In both cases, pause competing VPN clients before you declare TUN defective. Two stacks negotiating default routes is a classic way to make rule mode look broken when the rules never ran.

If your workload includes Microsoft Store apps or unusual loopback restrictions, advanced readers can pair this guide with the TUN, UWP, and loopback article; beginners should finish clean mode switching first, then graduate to those edge cases.

7. Windows vs macOS: Permission and Settings Gotchas

Both platforms honor rule, global, and direct the same way once traffic reaches mihomo. Where they diverge is how often applications respect system proxy versus how aggressively you need TUN to mop up leaks. Chromium-based browsers typically follow the Windows proxy sheet you can open in Settings; many cross-platform dev tools do not unless you export variables. macOS adds its own flavor of signing and extension prompts that look unrelated to Mihomo Party until you realise the tunnel never attached.

Secure DNS settings in Chrome or Edge can imitate “routing bugs” while rule mode is innocent. The Chrome and Edge secure DNS article walks through that collision on Windows; analogous toggles exist on other platforms and deserve the same suspicion when mode switches appear ineffective in the browser only.

Laptop users who suspend frequently should note adapter reordering. If dock changes or Wi-Fi handoffs leave ghosts behind, cycling capture off, returning to rule mode, and re-enabling the capture you trust clears more issues than reinstalling binaries. Document your default pairing—capture plus mode—so future you is not guessing which Tuesday night experiment stuck.

8. Practical Workflows: Browsing, Streaming, and Development

For light browsing and email, stay on rule mode with system proxy if your browsers behave. Escalate to TUN when you notice web assets loading from domains your profile already tags but the browser somehow bypassed the listener, often because an extension or helper executable used a separate network path.

Streaming stacks are where people reach for global mode too eagerly. Start by verifying DNS alignment and region tags inside YAML; many providers key off resolver observation more than raw IP blocks. If you must flip global mode to prove a point, choose a node group matched to the catalog you want, then revert once playback stabilises.

Developers should standardise environment snippets per project. Keep rule mode as baseline, add explicit proxy exports for terminals that need them, and use direct mode when benchmarking builds against corporate mirrors that forbid overseas exits. When container workflows join the story, the Docker through host Clash guide explains gateway and environment-variable patterns that complement desktop mode toggles instead of fighting them.

If you juggle multiple maintained clients, the Clash GUI pick guide for 2026 places Mihomo Party alongside alternatives so you can articulate why you prefer this control plane for mode-heavy workflows without re-litigating installs from scratch.

9. A Clean Mode-Switch Checklist You Can Reuse

Follow the same boring ritual every time and you will spend less time in forums. First, confirm your active profile parses and outbound lists populate; a hollow dashboard makes every mode lie. Second, decide whether you are changing policy (rule, global, direct) or capture (system proxy, TUN) and touch only that layer first. Third, wait for the core to acknowledge the change in logs before you hit refresh forty times in a browser.

Fourth, test twice: a browser page you trust and a command-line probe that does not reuse the browser’s cache. Fifth, undo in reverse order when you finish an experiment so hybrid states do not linger. Sixth, if you touched TUN, glance at virtual adapters and routes before you declare victory; driver states linger across fast user switching and sleep.

Seventh, write a one-line note if you changed anything unusual—“global + TUN for hotel wifi, revert tomorrow morning.” Future you will not remember whether the strange latency was DNS, mode, or exhaustion.

10. Troubleshooting: When the Toggle Lies to You

“Rule mode, but only one app is wrong.” Inspect whether that executable honors system proxy, needs environment variables, or spawns helpers with their own TLS. The fix is capture or variables, not necessarily rewriting half your subscription.

“Global mode and everything is sluggish.” Your node group health is suspect, or a congestion-heavy protocol is now on the critical path for domains that used to stay local. Fall back to rule mode and validate latency on the subset you actually need abroad.

“Direct mode but something still feels tunneled.” Another client may still own routes, or capture remained enabled while only policy shifted. Turn capture off deliberately, compare again, then re-enable in the pairing your notes recommend.

“TUN on + rule mode still misses a game.” Anti-cheat and kernel filters occasionally coexist poorly with virtual adapters. Confirm whether the title requires split exclusions, and pause other security products momentarily to learn whether they blocked the helper—not the game servers themselves.

11. Frequently Asked Questions

Is TUN a proxy mode in Mihomo Party?

No. TUN is a capture mechanism. Rule, Global, and Direct describe how mihomo routes flows once they reach the engine. You can combine TUN with any of the three policy modes; the debugging story changes because more processes participate by default.

When should I use Global instead of Rule?

Use Global for short troubleshooting, captive portals, or demos where you want every flow on your primary proxy chain without debating YAML. Return to Rule for everyday use so local and domestic traffic follows the splits your profile authors intended.

Does Direct stop Mihomo Party from running?

Direct mode does not quit the client. It changes forwarding intent so traffic exits without using remote outbounds the way Global does. Keep capture settings in mind if you want the entire machine to behave as if no tunnel existed.

12. Closing Thoughts

Switching Mihomo Party between rule mode, global mode, and direct is a lightweight action with heavyweight implications because it rewrites how your mihomo profile interprets the internet for every app that actually reaches the core. Treat TUN as the widening lens that drags stubborn traffic into that policy, not as a substitute for understanding modes. On both Windows and macOS, boring habits—confirm logs, test twice, undo toggles in order—keep proxy mode changes from turning into week-long myths about your hardware.

Compared with glossy VPN apps that collapse everything into a single connect button, Mihomo Party trades a few extra concepts for log-first honesty: you can see when a mode change worked, when DNS disagreed with routing, and when another adapter stole the default route. Many one-tap VPN products hide those layers until support tickets arrive, which feels simpler until you need to know why only one banking site broke after an OS update. Older Clash for Windows habits map cleanly onto these toggles, but the ecosystem has moved forward; if you still archive stray ZIP releases, the Clash for Windows migration guide explains how modern maintained clients—including Mihomo Party—keep policy ownership with you instead of with whoever shipped the slickest installer that month.

Source code and issue tracking for Mihomo Party are published in the mihomo-party-org/mihomo-party repository on GitHub. Use it for changelogs and transparency; for day-to-day installers across desktop platforms, prefer this site’s curated download flow rather than hunting ad-hoc mirrors.

When you are ready to align installers with the modes you just rehearsed, open the official download hub after you save your notes about capture pairings. One maintained entry point beats scattered builds when you rebuild machines or help family members repeat the same safe baseline. → Download Clash free and keep Mihomo Party installs consistent across Windows and macOS