I’m not very satisfied by using different browsers to split tunnel my connection, so I have done this trick using the SIMPLEST http proxy server that I can find (see below). The whole idea is to run a proxy server locally, split tunnel the proxy server in ProtonVPN, then configure your browser to connect the websites that need to run without VPN through it.
This is how I have done this:
- Find a simple http proxy server:
- If you already know one that you can trust, use it and share it with us.
- For me, I used this (https://github.com/jthomperoo/simple-proxy). The prebuilt binaries in the releases section seem good, but it is recommended to review the code and build it yourself, or fork it and let GitHub actions build it for you when you create a new release.
- For the mentioned proxy, I’d recommend the following arguments
-bind127.0.0.1-port <PORT> -basic-auth <USER>:<PASS> -protocol https -cert server.pem -key server.key. a bind IP to make it only available locally, a user-defined port to make it harder to find the proxy for malicious software, a username and password to prevent unauthorized access to the tunnel, and the remaining needs generating the certificate through openssl and adding it to the system which may not be necessary if you’re only binding to 127.0.0.1. - Exclude the proxy in ProtonVPN.
- Use your preferred extension to connect the target websites through the proxy. Currently, Firefox multi-account containers plugin have a bug that prevents saving proxy username and password. It is expected to be fixed in the next version, so currently I’m using “Container proxy” (which is unofficial) for this.
- On Windows, adding it to Task Scheduler to run on Startup, and making it run without signing in or remembering user credentials made the experience much better as the proxy currently runs without any annoyances.
I’d be happy to hear your feedback and suggestions. Also, it would be great if ProtonVPN desktop had this feature built-in.