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Q&A Practical wireguard VPN on Android

I tried to use my Wireguard VPN on Android, and, it sucks! I installed https://f-droid.org/packages/com.wireguard.android/ thinking that would be "the" wireguard app. I configured it with my conne...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 11mo ago by Michael‭

Question android vpn
#1: Initial revision by user avatar matthewsnyder‭ · 2023-09-27T03:40:39Z (about 1 year ago)
Practical wireguard VPN on Android
I tried to use my Wireguard VPN on Android, and, it sucks!

I installed https://f-droid.org/packages/com.wireguard.android/ thinking that would be "the" wireguard app. I configured it with my connection details and confirmed that it's being used.

To turn it on, I have to launch the Wireguard app and press the toggle. The app itself is very spartan, so there's no features like automatically re-enabling the VPN at certain times or after a delay. There is a drawer tile for VPNs (with a key icon), but this doesn't turn on the VPN when you click it. Instead it makes you pick the Wireguard app from a menu, and then launches it. It's really not convenient to toggle the VPN on and off, so I tried leaving it always on.

A lot of sites these days block VPNs. Many websites don't open in the browser and some apps break. For example, the LinkedIn app doesn't work, because even though my VPN is in Europe and the exit point is in the US, LinkedIn redirects all VPNs to the [Chinese version](https://www.linkedin.cn/) of their site which does not allow access to your LinkedIn account.

I thought that there would at least be something like the Orbot app, where you can designate that individual apps should go through the VPN or not. The toggling doesn't really make sense, because when I globally turn off my VPN to use some anti-VPN app or site, all other apps could send packets in the background, revealing my true IP and defeating the purpose of the VPN. This setup seems to me completely unusable in practice.

Is this how people normally use VPNs on Android? Or am I missing something? I completely ignored all Play Store VPN apps a priori, since I assume it's full of proprietary apps that vacuum up all your data and sell it to third parties.