Clash Setup Guide: From Subscription Import to Verified Connection in Four Steps

00Preparation: two things you can't skip

Before you start, make sure you have both of the following — without them, none of the steps below will work:

• A Clash client already installed. Clash Plus is recommended; it requires Android 8.0 or later on an arm64-v8a device (essentially any mainstream phone from 2018 onward qualifies). Get the installer from the Android section of the download page, download the APK, and tap to install directly. If the system warns "installing unknown apps is blocked," grant your browser or file manager "allow app installs" permission on the settings screen that appears, then return and install again.
• A subscription URL. Provided by your proxy service, typically a long link starting with https://, usually found under a "Copy subscription" or "One-click import to Clash" button in your service's user dashboard. Treat this link like a login credential — never post it publicly.

If your service provides a Base64 node list or another protocol-specific link instead of a standard Clash-format subscription, the client may not recognize it directly and you'll need to convert the format first — see the technical note "Clash Subscription Formats Explained" for the details. This page assumes you already have a standard Clash subscription.

01Step one: import the subscription link

First, copy the full subscription link from your service's dashboard to the clipboard. Some services offer a "One-click import to Clash" button — tapping it prompts the system to choose an app to open with; pick your installed Clash client and this step completes automatically. If that shortcut works for you, skip straight to step two; if there's no such button, or nothing happens when you tap it, follow the manual steps below.

Open the client and find the Profiles page in the bottom navigation or side menu. It's empty the first time you open it — tap the "+" new button in the top-right or bottom-right corner, and the client will offer two import methods:

• URL / Import from link — the most common method. Choose it, type any name you'll recognize later (your service's name works fine) in the "Name" field, long-press to paste the subscription link you copied into the "URL" field, double-check there's no stray whitespace or line break at either end, then tap save.
• File / Import locally — if what you have is a .yaml configuration file rather than a link, choose this and select the file from your device's storage. Local files don't auto-update and are generally only used for debugging.

After saving, the client immediately requests the configuration from the subscription URL. On a normal connection this finishes within seconds and a new card appears in the profile list showing the profile name, node count, data usage, and last-updated time — seeing these confirms the import succeeded. Finally, make sure this card is selected (marked with a checkmark or highlighted border) — only the selected profile is actually active.

02Step two: choose a proxy mode and node

Don't rush to hit start right after importing — take a minute to settle two things: which outbound mode to use, and which node to route through. These two settings determine where your traffic actually goes; getting either wrong leads to "connected but nothing changed" or "every site suddenly got slower."

Find the outbound mode option on the client's Settings page or the mode switcher on the main screen. There are usually three options:

• Rule mode — each request is routed direct or through the proxy according to the rules defined in the configuration: local sites go direct, sites outside your region go through the proxy, ad domains get blocked. Use this for everyday use — it's also the mode nearly every subscription is designed around.
• Global mode — every request, regardless of destination, goes through the selected proxy node. Even local sites get routed overseas, which noticeably slows things down; use this only temporarily when checking whether rule matching is the problem.
• Direct mode — no traffic goes through the proxy at all, effectively pausing it while keeping the connection state intact so you can switch back instantly.

Once Rule mode is confirmed, switch to the Proxy page. Here you'll see the policy groups defined in your subscription, commonly named things like "Proxy Select," "PROXY," or "Auto Select." Open a manually selectable policy group to see the full node list; tap the lightning-bolt or waveform icon to run a latency test — a few seconds later, each node shows a millisecond value next to its name. Lower is faster; green generally means under 200ms, while red or "timeout" means the node is currently unavailable. Tap a node with a low latency value to select it — its name will be highlighted once selected. If the policy group is an url-test auto-select type, the client picks the fastest node automatically and no manual selection is needed.

How Rule mode distinguishes local from international traffic, and what role the GeoIP and GeoSite databases play in that, is a more advanced topic covered in "How to Update the GeoIP and GeoSite Databases." A full comparison of the three modes' behavior is also available on the troubleshooting page.

03Step three: start the connection

With mode and node settled, return to the client's main screen (home page), where there's a prominent start control — a large circular toggle in Clash Plus and FlClash, or a "Tap to Start" bar at the bottom of the screen in Clash Meta for Android. Tap it.

On first launch, Android will show a "Connection request" dialog stating that the app wants to set up a VPN connection. This is the standard authorization Android requires for any app that intercepts system-wide traffic — Clash takes over device traffic through the system's VPN interface (TUN mode), and this step is unavoidable. Tap "Allow" or "OK." This authorization is only needed once; the client won't ask again on later launches. If you accidentally tap deny, tapping start again will bring the prompt back up.

Once authorized, within a second or two you should notice one or more of the following changes, any of which confirms the proxy service is running:

• A key (VPN) icon appears in the status bar — the clearest signal;
• Pulling down the notification shade shows a persistent Clash notification with live upload/download stats and the current mode;
• The toggle on the client's main screen switches to a running state and starts showing a connection count or traffic graph.

To stop, tap the toggle again or tap "Stop" from the notification — the status bar key icon disappears immediately. If the toggle snaps back right after you tap start, or the service reports a startup failure, the most common cause is a conflict with another VPN app (Android only allows one app to hold the VPN interface at a time) — disconnect any other VPN in system settings first, then start again. Other startup failure scenarios are covered on the troubleshooting page.

04Step four: verify the proxy is actually working

A key icon in the status bar only confirms "the service is running" — not "traffic is actually flowing correctly." Run through the following three checks, from outside-in, and only consider setup complete once all three pass:

• Check outbound access: open a browser and visit a site that's normally unreachable without a proxy. If it loads, the full chain of "client → node → destination site" is working. If it doesn't, go back to step two and try a node with normal latency — a single bad node is the most common cause.
• Check routing: then visit one or two local sites (shopping or video sites both work). Under Rule mode these should stay on a direct connection and load at the same speed as without the proxy. If local sites are noticeably slower or won't load, first confirm the mode isn't stuck on "Global." If it's still abnormal under Rule mode, the issue is likely with the routing rules or Geo databases — update them following this note and re-test.
• Check the logs (optional but recommended): keep the client's Logs page open, switch back to the browser and visit a few sites, then return to review the scrolling entries. Each log line shows the request's target domain, the rule it matched, and the node it actually used — for example, an international domain hitting the proxy group and a local domain hitting DIRECT. This page is the most direct way to see "where traffic is actually going," and it's the first place to check for any future routing issue.

If verification gets stuck on one of these steps — no page loads at all, every node times out, or the connection keeps dropping — don't just keep reinstalling the client. It's far more efficient to match your symptom to the right section: the troubleshooting page organizes complete diagnostic walkthroughs by symptom, covering no internet access, node timeouts, subscription failures, slow speeds, and DNS issues — working through the matching section usually pinpoints the cause.

05Follow-up settings: making everyday use effortless

Once the main flow is working, three more settings are worth configuring right away — each takes about a minute and lives in the client's settings page:

• Automatic subscription updates: on the profile card's edit screen, set the "auto-update interval" to 720 or 1440 minutes so the client periodically fetches the latest node list without manual refreshing. If updates keep failing, see the subscription section of the troubleshooting page.
• Launch on boot: enable the "Start on boot" toggle in settings, and mark the client as "unrestricted / no optimization" in your system's battery optimization list to prevent it from being killed in the background and dropping the connection. Custom Android skins from Chinese OEMs may also require separately whitelisting it in an autostart manager.
• Per-app routing (optional): under "Access control" or "App filtering" settings, you can restrict the proxy to specific apps only, or make specific apps bypass it entirely — useful for banking apps that require a direct connection.

To dig deeper into how the clients differ (for example, who FlClash versus Clash Plus is better suited for), see the head-to-head comparison page. To understand how the original core, Meta, and mihomo relate to each other, read the core comparison note. Desktop installation and setup instructions are available in each platform's section on the download page.