Hey everyone :) I am just wondering how often people are connected to proton vpn? Is it all the time. Just when you want to fool the location of streaming sites or just periodically.

I am a person who is always connected to proton vpn generally on PC but recently, I got tired of the german ads on reddit :P so I just are connected to Tele2 here in Sweden but probably switching to Bahnhof :)

This VPN came highly recommended based on Reddit comments, so I bought it for the world cup to watch the Brazil games on a Brazilian stream.

We are using the server with the lowest server load.

It's the biggest piece of shit ever and has caused so much annoyance over the last few games, not just this one.

It just lags and freezes constantly, and we have to watch the game at 360p, where the ball is 1 pixel, and even THAT lags.

Are we doing something wrong? We are pulling our hair out. We just want to watch a simple 1080p YouTube stream. We're not steaming an 8k IMAX movie.

Just a quick question, i am currently using mullvad and want to switch over to proton. my mullvad plan still has some time left on it, so i wanted to know if this 70% off deal for 2 years on proton is just a temporary promo or if i can wait out my mullvad subscription and switch over later.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to point out how ProtonVPN has an App for both MacOS and Windows that looks pretty clean. Windows even has a more up to date app than MacOS. And I think Linux’s turn should be next.

Currently on Linux we only get an outdated, less polished app experience and some settings that do not even offer all the newest protocols or beta protocols (e.g. smart isn’t available and the Proton Wireguard protocol also isn’t there, even though it is on Windows). And beyond that some of the Linux clients aren’t even official but maintained by the community (e.g. Arch).

Therefore I think it is time to change that and finally build a good Linux Client for ProtonVPN and making the community driven versions for some Distros finally official. It would also be nice if it would look like the Windows client (with the view of where you are, the newest/beta protocols and all the newest features with a design that is modern and up to date).

Thanks in Advance!

Been a Proton user for a while but I'm hitting a wall. I need to consistently appear as connecting from a specific countries [Egypt - Saudi Arabia - UAE] (not for anything shady freelance work + some regional services that geo-lock), and Proton's servers there seem to be virtual/software-defined rather than actual physical presence. Result: half the sites and platforms I connect to (including some enterprise stuff like Teams/AVD) are flagging the connection as anomalous or just not accepting it as being from that country at all, these services detect all proton servers as if they are from France.

Has anyone dealt with this? Specifically wondering are there VPNs with actual confirmed physical servers (not virtual locations) in the Gulf/MENA region that hold up to scrutiny?

Not sure if this is isolated to just ProtonVPN, but after recent updates we've been dealing with massive amounts of packet loss every so often on our WG tunnels. Didn't matter what server I set up. It would work for a bit and then just out of nowhere start dropping packets. Turns out the Proton RoadWarrior setup may be a bit dated. MTU settings are too big. Even setting it to 1300 was too big. Once I set to 1280, I stopped losing packets. Not sure if this will be a permanent fix, but if anyone else encounters this (seen some reports), this is how it was fixed for us.

UPDATE: Issue returned. Turned MTU down to 1200. Fixed again for now. Not sure what the hell is happening

I'm marking this as NSFW because of the subject matter

So why would this be necessary? because the EU is doing age verification even more aggressively than the UK and Australia. Reddit in particular is caving in even though they haven't been mandated to yet

Oh and...if you're a parent and you don't want your kids to see certain content online? That's on you. You shouldn't outsource your parenting to corporations and the government

parental controls have been built into desktops and laptops since at least windows 7, game consoles since at least the original Xbox and android phones since those existed in the first place. If you can't get those to work on your children's devices, put the controls on your router at home, if you can't manage that, just watch your kids when they're online

Why is my instance of Proton VPN just crashing or shutting down at random times? I have the icon pinned to my notification bar so I can see when it crashes. There is never any kind of notification when this happens. Happened twice today and I don't know why. Is there any solution to this? I'm using Windows 11 on what I assume is the latest update.

When I turn off ProtonVPN it works. Is z.ai so bad? Their privacy policy seemed to me is pretty much the same as any other of the data harvesters.

home on  main via ❄  impure (shell)
❯ dig chat.z.ai

; <<>> DiG 9.20.24 <<>> chat.z.ai
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 47790
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;chat.z.ai.                     IN      A

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
explanation.invalid.    10800   IN      TXT     "Proton DNSBL/1b"

;; Query time: 32 msec
;; SERVER: 10.2.0.1#53(10.2.0.1) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Sat Jul 04 18:09:56 CEST 2026
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 74

Just paid for the middle tier of Proton, connected to US, downloaded a torrent and immediately got a cease and desist. What am I missing in terms of setup and what are your recs?

Hi everyone,
I recently subscribed to Proton Unlimited and started using ProtonVPN.
I noticed that both on my home Wi-Fi and on my Vodafone mobile network in the Czech Republic, the Smart protocol always selects Stealth.
However, if I manually switch to WireGuard, it connects without any issues on both networks.
So I’m wondering:
Why does Smart keep choosing Stealth instead of WireGuard?
Is there any benefit to using Stealth in my situation?
Or should I simply set WireGuard manually if it works reliably?
I’d appreciate any explanation of how Smart decides which protocol to use.
Thanks!

Hi,

I'm on Fedora 44 KDE on laptop and desktop.

Laptop: official install from the website, log in, works perfect.

Desktop: Official install, log in, no internet.
I also tried the config files imported into network manager, no internet.

I am remembering I had used Cyberghost vpn once but it wasn't supported, might settings have been left over from this? Still new to Linux.

Thx
Since Reddit told me I might break the rules by not contacting the support first: I did, I did all the steps they asked till now: not using flatpack, clean up, install officail, the tests below.

ping google.com

PING google.com (142.250.102.101) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from rb-in-f101.1e100.net (142.250.102.101): icmp_seq=1 ttl=106 time=27.0 ms

--- google.com ping statistics ---

91 packets transmitted, 5 received, 94.5055% packet loss, time 92166ms

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 25.579/28.322/33.616/2.782 ms

nslookup google.com

Server: 127.0.0.53

Address: 127.0.0.53#53

Non-authoritative answer:

Name: google.com

Address: 142.250.102.100

Hi

I am loving the VPN, it's virtually flawless for what I need it to do. However, I am encountering a really frustrating issue on iOS. Whenever I want to load up emails, I have to first disconnect the VPN and then my emails will load (using the default mail app on iPhone). It's annoying cause I sometimes will forget to reconnect the VPN once I finish using my mail app.

I have tried all sorts of things to remedy it, including making a shortcut that will turn off the VPN when the mail app is launched and then turn the VPN back on when the mail app is closed. However, that does not work reliably at all.

Any help would be appreciated!

So it seems like Proton VPN GUI needs systemD on Linux. Has anyone got it to run on a systemD free system using the CLI

Version: 5.1.4

Since it's on BETA right now it's a bit unstable for me.

I’m interested in hearing from the community.

i was trying to open a free account and following the "guide" but it just sends me to the payment page, and it doesnt have the "get free proton" option too, is it impossible to use proton without paying now?

Hello!

I've been a ProtonVPN Plus user for about 3 months, and it suddenly stopped working on my Windows PC.

The VPN connects successfully, but as soon as it's connected, I completely lose internet access. Without the VPN, my internet works perfectly.

On Brave, I get a "DNS_PROBE_POSSIBLE" error whenever ProtonVPN is connected.

I've already tried pretty much everything:

• Different protocols
• Different servers/countries
• Reinstalling ProtonVPN
• Network resets and DNS flushes
• Disabling Kill Switch
• Following all troubleshooting steps from Proton Support

I've been in contact with Proton Support, but nothing has fixed the issue.

Has anyone experienced this or found a solution? Any help would be greatly appreciated.