Article

Toosheh: when the sky is the only open road

On shutdown day, the dish on the roof still works. The full Toosheh overview and three hands-on guides: install, setup, and using the app.

Published: 2026-07-09

A city rooftop at night: satellite dishes line the parapet in the amber glow of the alley below, empty chairs between them — On the roof sits something an internet shutdown cannot switch off.

On the day the internet vanishes, the phone in your hand becomes black glass; the dish on the roof, though, stays put and does not switch off. Toosheh uses exactly that gap: it broadcasts content one way over satellite, you catch it with a receiver and a flash drive, and you open it without a byte of internet. This page is the overview; the hands-on teaching lives in three separate guides you'll reach below.

A communications satellite over Earth — The link is one-way: the sky sends, you only receive — so there is nothing to cut.

Toosheh at a glance

Toosheh comes from the nonprofit NetFreedom Pioneers and has run since 2016. A satellite channel broadcasts raw data instead of a TV picture: news, films, books, podcasts and, above all, censorship-circumvention tools. You record that broadcast, and the Toosheh software turns the recording into real files. Because nothing is sent from your side, an internal internet shutdown doesn't touch it at all.

The real Toosheh channel screen on the satellite — The Toosheh channel shows no ordinary picture, but an information screen with the day's package details.

Why it matters

An internet shutdown is not just silence; it is targeted darkness. The moment you go blind, a flood of rumour and fabricated video replaces the news — documented in the deepfake war archive. As long as a dish sits on the roof and a drive is in your pocket, the world still reaches you; without them you hand your eyes and ears to whoever holds the shutdown switch. And in that darkness, influence networks like the one in the Prisonbreak file thrive. Toosheh breaks that — it doesn't even need the internet.

Three guides, in order

Don't half-learn it; these three pages build on each other:

Installing Toosheh — get and install the app on Windows, Android or Linux, with the official video.
Setup and satellite reception — aim the dish at Yahsat 52.5°E, read the channel screen and record a clean package (the exact parameters are there).
Using the Toosheh app — extract the file and move through the app's five sections, with a real screenshot for each step.

What you need (in brief)

An ordinary satellite dish, a receiver that records to USB, a drive with a few free gigabytes, and a Windows or Android device to extract. The specifics are in the guides.

We don't hide the risks

Satellite equipment has been officially illegal in Iran since 1994, though enforcement has come and gone. The signal can be jammed, and the money is fragile: Toosheh's funding was cut in August 2025 and later resumed through donors. Toosheh is not a miracle; it is a tool — and a tool is learned before the day you need it.

Today, not tomorrow

The next shutdown gives no warning. On the day the internet goes, there is no time left to install and learn; only to use. So start today with Installing Toosheh. The sky is still open.