Opening Clash Verge by hand after every boot, then turning the system proxy on by hand, gets old within two days. This covers everything related to starting automatically.
Three switches that get confused
Settings → General has three options people mix up:
Auto Launch registers a startup entry with the system.
Silent Start only affects whether a window appears at launch. Without it, a window pops up every time you boot.
Lite mode: Clash Verge's interface is a WebView, which is where most of the memory goes. Lite mode unloads the interface and leaves the core running; click the tray icon and it comes back. Proxy behaviour is entirely unaffected.
The recommended combination
With that set, the experience is: boot the machine, do nothing, and the proxy is already working with an icon sitting quietly in the tray.
Platform specifics
Windows
Auto-launch is done through the registry, at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunAbout UAC: if Clash Verge is set to "run as administrator", the ordinary Windows startup mechanism cannot launch it (UAC blocks it). In that case use Task Scheduler instead:
Win+R, thentaskschd.msc- Create Task → on the General tab tick "Run with highest privileges"
- Trigger: At log on
- Action: Start a program, pointing at the Clash Verge exe
Most people do not need this — Clash Verge does not require administrator rights by default, since the privileged parts of TUN are handled by the separately installed system service.
macOS
Auto-launch uses Login Items, visible under System Settings → General → Login Items.
Linux
Auto-start relies on your desktop environment's autostart mechanism, which produces a file here:
~/.config/autostart/clash-verge.desktopCheck whether it exists:
ls -l ~/.config/autostart/
cat ~/.config/autostart/clash-verge.desktopIf it is missing, toggle the setting in Clash Verge; if that still does not produce it, write it yourself:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Clash Verge
Exec=/usr/bin/clash-verge
Icon=clash-verge
Terminal=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=trueGNOME, KDE, XFCE and Cinnamon all honour this standard location, with minor differences.
The tray icon
What the tray menu can do
Right-click the tray icon (single click on macOS) and you can usually:
- Switch between rule, global and direct modes
- Toggle the system proxy and TUN
- Switch nodes quickly
- Open the main window
- Quit
For daily use this is much faster than opening the main window.
No tray icon under GNOME
GNOME removed legacy tray support in 3.26; you need an extension:
sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-appindicator # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install gnome-shell-extension-appindicator # FedoraLog out and back in, then confirm it is enabled in the Extensions app.
Windows hides the tray icon
Windows tucks less-used tray icons into the overflow area.
Settings → Personalisation → Taskbar → Other system tray icons → turn Clash Verge on and it stays visible.
Something easy to overlook: what happens when you quit
Quitting properly from the tray menu makes Clash Verge:
- Turn off the system proxy setting
- Remove the virtual adapter and routes, if TUN was on
- Stop the core process
Killing the process from Task Manager skips all three, which can leave a stale proxy setting behind — the classic "I closed the app and now nothing loads".
"It takes a while after boot before the internet works"
Some people notice the first 10–20 seconds after boot have no connectivity. Usually the sequence is:
The fix: set a longer auto-update interval (24 hours) rather than relying on an update at every boot. The config is cached locally, so it can come up without network access.
In short
- Auto Launch + Silent Start + lite mode is the least-effort combination
- On Windows, when auto-launch fails, check Task Manager → Startup apps first
- On macOS, re-set it after moving the app
- Do not kill the process from Task Manager — quit from the tray
Related: six settings on first launch and uninstalling cleanly.
