You just need a DNS server that does that, I guess?

Is that yet another thing the mothership won’t let you do with an iPhone?

I don't think this limitation is exclusive to Apple though.

As far as I know, there is no way to edit a hosts file on Android either. Is there?

Not without root

I still consider it an Android bug that it isn't possible, even after all these years. The permission model on Android is pure nonsense.

You can do it on a GNU/Linux phone though (sent from my Librem 5).

Well... not directly without root, but you can host a DNS Server on Android and use it if you wanted to

Theoretically if you setup something like nextdns on the iPhone you could set an override

So I was thinking it would be kind of nice if there was a way to write a url like

https://nitter.net(c/o 185.246.188.57)/something/other

I guess links would still be broken though. Maybe a browser feature for a hosts file?

That's basically what a HTTP client does. It connects to the server (, does some TLS stuff) and sends a request like

  GET / HTTP/2
  Host: nitter.net
  […other headers]

This would just need to be exposed in a browser.