Zap

Zap is a Bitcoin Lightning wallet for iOS and Android. The app is extremely user-friendly and therefore recommended to everyone. And the best part is: you can attach it to your own node via Tor. The only downside is that the Android version of the app accesses your node through LND's RPC API. The iOS version does support LND's REST API.

Android#

Download the Zap: Bitcoin Lightning Wallet app from the Play Store. This one is still under development but that's OK.

Preparation#

Since we are running a headless server, we don't have a QR code that we can scan later so we need to paste a connection string. We create this connection string with lndconnect on your Pi. SSH your Pi and type:

lndconnect --host=xxx.onion --port=10009 -j

Where it says xxx.onion, of course you enter your onion address for LND's RPC API. A piece of text will appear that looks something like the following:

lndconnect://xxx.onion:10009?cert=very_many_characters&macaroon=very_many_characters

Copy that chunk of text from SSH and paste it into a Google Docs document, for example (because we want to have that text on our phone later).

Zap#

1. On your phone, switch to this Google Docs document and copy the entire string lndconnect://xxx.onion:10009?cert=very_many_characters&macaroon=very_many_characters.
2. Open Zap
3. Tap on Set up Wallet
4. Paste
5. OK

You are now connected to your own Node.

Through Manage... you can change the name of your wallet. By default, it gets the name of your Tor address namely.

iOS#

Download the Zap: Bitcoin Lightning Wallet from the App Store. Then, when you install the app and open it for the first time, you'll be asked to come up with a PIN. Immediately after that, a screen appears that allows you to connect your node. To do this, you need to install lndconnect on your Pi. SSH your Pi and type:

lndconnect --host=xxx.onion --port=8080 --nocert -j

Where xxx.onion says, of course you enter your onion address for LND's REST API. A piece of text will appear that looks something like the following.

lndconnect://xxx.onion:8080?macaroon=many_characters

Copy that piece of text and open the Zap app on your iPhone. If all goes well, you'll see a screen in front of you that looks like this.

Click "Paste" and Zap will automatically fill everything in for you.

Press "Connect" and the connection is established.

Connection over clearnet#

You don't need to connect over Tor. In fact, Zap works better over clearnet. You can generate a lndconnect string the same way as with Tor.

lndconnect -j --host=YOUR_IP --port=10009 --adminmacaroonpath=~/.lnd/data/chain/bitcoin/mainnet/admin.macaroon --tlscertpath=~/.lnd/tls.cert

You should just replace Your_IP for the IP of your Pi in the above command. Or if you are using a DDNS replace it with your URL.