Any good Android apps for connecting to vpn only while away from home wireless?

Hello. I’ve got a pi-hole setup on a B+, and PiVPN. Works great!

However, I don’t want to use the “always on” VPN functionality on my Pixel 3 Android phone, as it limits my phone’s bandwidth to that of my home upstream limit (30Mbps). I’d love to connect to my VPN whenever I’m away from home… And that’s it. I’ve tried it in Tasker and been unsuccessful.

Has anyone else done this? Thanks!

I can speak for the iOS WireGuard App: you can’t whitelisting an special ssid. You can use: mobile Data, wlan or mobile & wlan.
It works pretty good, even in my home network.

OpenVPN Client is the best VPN app I’ve found. Little spendy but worth it, can configure auto connect and it is very reliable.

https://marcstan.net/blog/2017/06/25/PiVPN-and-Pi-hole/

This is the easiest setup I have found.

Used it and it works like a charm.

With OpenVPN I can choose direct WiFI or WiFi filtered through my Raspberry at home.

Works great.

You’re suggesting I use Wireguard instead of OpenVPN. That’s a good idea, though I’d like to know how to do this with OpenVPN specifically, as some of my less-than-sysadminy friends are already using OpenVPN and asked me the same question.

Does the Wireguard app allow you to whitelist specific SSIDs or anything?

That’s only for esolution of outside hostnames that point to local hosts. It still limits bandwidth. Either way my Ubiquiti USG is configured for hairpin NAT and the speed is still tied to WAN upstream limits.

Does is allow you to automatically connect except when on specific SSIDs?

That’s what PiVPN is.

Does the Wireguard app allow you to whitelist specific SSIDs or anything?

Only on iOS.

Yep! Very easy to configure too

My autoconnect page

That is true for local devices, but for other things (like a download, or a streaming video) it still caps your connection at the upstream speed.

I get 1Gb down and 30Mbps up. I what to use my full download speed (or at least, 250Mbps that my phone/tablets get).

It works! It auto-disconnects the VPN at home. Whoo!
Thanks.

Awesome, that’s what I wanted to do. I’ll buy it!

Right, but from what I can tell none of the OpenVPN apps can whitelist home wireless networks and disconnect.

Great! I used OpenVPN Connect for a while with tasker to handle connecting/disconnecting then they changed the API and it was just a train wreck. Switched to OpenVPN Client and never looked back :slight_smile:

One thing I’ve noticed is that my connection is much slower on VPN - from the wireless at my neighbor’s, I get 13.2/6.62 on VPN and 37.5/7.22 (Mbps) off.

My home connection is 1Gbps/34Mbps, so you should get more than 13.2 down when on VPN, no?

It shouldn’t slow it down aside from maybe adding some latency. Not sure why you’d be getting worse speeds : x is your VPN device on WiFi or wired?

I got 20/6 with VPN and 25/6 without. So I keep my VPN on all the time as the difference is not that big. I use “openvpn for android” the open source version from f-droid. I probably tweaked a little bit the options to compress ect. You should double check you use udp

Wired, of course. Fast MicroSD (class 10) and pi model 3 B+. Should get decent speeds.

I think I’m using the default MTU, encryption and UDP but I’ll have to check.

Yeah, using UDP. I’ll enable compression (lzo4) and see how it goes.