(FIX!!: Playing MUSIC (even local music) somehow keep the connection awake, no VPN disconnection anymore!!
Credit to one of the guys replying in a post while I searched this subject, I didn’t think it would work but apprently it does! I have no idea why.
- Play any music, I use Apple Music (not sure about othe music apps), even if you are not subscirbed to Apple Music, i.e. all my music are local files I mannually transfer from my laptop.
- Lock your phone, with VPN on as usual
- NO disconnect, even according to my VPN log file
- It seems as long as you are playing music, even not streaming, the WIFI chip does not go to sleep mode therefore VPN is always on.
- Music playing alone cost very very little battery life, especially for people that already listen to music on iphone most of time. If you are worried about accidently playing the music out loud, get a music file that is 100% total silence, but just mute your phone is also fine (noticification is controlled seprately). Plus, it’s very easy to control music playing and checking it from lock screen, so it’s really a great work around. (the other soultion I know of is either jailbreak or never lock your phone)
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Original Post
(p.s. I posted this at r/Apple, but I also wanted ask you guys because I really like and respect Proton everything and I want to thanks Proton’s ALWAYS fantastic and on-point, no BS customer support. I can get a great response from Proton about iphone while even Apple’s staff don’t know about their own devices. Beautiful thing you are doing, Proton team)
I got ios 12.1, I always keep wifi and 4G on. When using ExpressVPN, I start to notice on the lock screen, after a while, the WIFI signal would change into 4G signal, while I haven’t move at all, and my MAC’s wifi works just fine. Unlock th phone immediately, the ExpressVPN app showing reconnecting.
Then I tried OpenVPN and ProtonVPN’s Beta test app, same problem, and OpenVPN have a ‘auto-reconnect after wake up’ feature.
It seems that ios is designed to put wifi chip to sleep, in order to perserve more battery life, if iphone is locked/in sleep (not immediatly) which means you still get internet but not FULL connection, but VPN need full connection to work, so VPNs are forced to disconnect during this period of time.
The situation got me to investigate:
In summary, the response I got from different parties:
ExpressVPN: Not aware of the problem, could because of the upodate a week ago.
ProtonVPN: This is the nature of ios, your traffic while locked is not protected and there is nothing VPN developers can do at the moment.
Online (but generally talking about ios 11 and before): This is a ‘feature’, you just can’t get VPN while locked w/o jailbreak or not lock your phone at all. Some people also mentioned a VPN ‘always on’ feature,
Apple: Online Chat guy: Don’t know
Call back guy: Double checked, Don’t know
SENIOR apple staff: 45 mins on the phone, she double checked, and she is saying:
‘VPNs always disconnect itself after a while.’
‘I got internet and emails in sleep mode just fine’
‘you have to contact VPN provider for this’
‘I don’t know how its desiged’
‘Maybe there is something wrong with you iphone, but I don’t have your iphone so I can’t test it, do you have any other iphone?’
Dear reddit people, can somebody please answer me these question, much appeciated:
- Is iphone’s traffic protected by VPN while in sleep/locked mode? (ofc provided you have a normal functioing phone and VPN app etc.)
- If not, is there a work-around of this problem ? (w/o jailbreaking)
- If yes, then does that mean I should not have this problem ? ( I am assuming my wifi signal turns into 4G signal because the VPN disconnect and the wifi signal is interrupted somehow)
- WHY THE FUDGE IS THIS APPLE SENIOR STAFF THIS STUPID ? (just side-rant)
Thanks again.