Tailscale

This saves me a ton of hassle. This allows me to access WhatsApp while on work Wi-Fi by routing through my home network. I’m also able to benefit from my Pihole server as a result. I tried a diy wireguard setup and just couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. This was super easy to setup and performance seems great. One nice feature to add would be the ability to have a timer set so that I disconnect from the vpn automatically by a certain time. I sometimes forget to disconnect and this can cause issues when I’m moving between Wi-Fi and cell data.

Feature request: Add an app settings for theme with three options: Light, Dark, System Setting. Tailscale uses system preferences to toggle dark mode. Unfortunately, visionOS doesn’t have this setting so the app defaults to light mode. Other than this minor gripe, Tailscale is amazing. I use it to remote into my home computers from anywhere in the world and with an exit node, I can access all of my favorite streaming apps.

App has definitely gotten better with updates and so I’m thankful for that. Not that long ago I had to force quit the app a few times to finally get it to connect and not give me re-auth errors. However, battery life and management is still a very very big deterrent to using this how I originally wanted to, which is always-on, using my pi-hole server for DNS and ad blocking. I’m following the issue in GitHub. Please please fix! Many users seeing the same thing and providing dumps. If you guys can get the battery usage under control then the app will be UNSTOPPABLE.

The app and service are great functionally, but there’s currently an issue with the app on IOS devices causing the app to consistently drain battery life 24/7 regardless of whether you’re actively transferring data through the mesh network. Leaving my phone unplugged with a full charge at night with the app running will drain the battery by 10-30% in 7 hours. Battery drain without Tailscale installed is <10%. After checking the Tailscale forums this seems to be a common and unresolved issue. Until it’s resolved it’s just not practical to use this app on a daily basis.

All major issues have been addressed, including vpn on demand. This is great. Everything is functional. I am leaving this at 4 stars for now because the battery life drains are still unknown with this version. I am still using raw wireguard because it uses less than 1% battery per day, while Tailscale can use anywhere between 7-15%. Perhaps Tailscale being too chatty and updating the local state might have something to do with it? This product will be the best in the world if battery usage can be optimized.

I love Tailscale. It makes it super easy to securely access all my devices from anywhere across my private network and cloud-top instances. Easy to set up, just sign in and away you go. My only ask is that the team add a widget to enable/disable Tailscale with a single tap. There are times I need to turn off the VPN (e.g. playing a game on my iPad) and it would be nice to have a one touch way to do that! Thanks for making such a great product!

This is how you write software. Perfectly executed. When you choose to obfuscate something excellent like Wireguard you better have UX experts around or you’ll embarrass yourself. See what TrueNAS Scale did to ZFS (they embarrassed themselves). This on the other hand is how it’s done. Take something amazing like Wireguard and make it simple and intuitive without sacrificing the goodness of the obfuscated software and you have Tailscale. Well done.

Would appreciate a Shortcuts integration to change the DNS settings. In my current country I have to turn my exit node and DNS settings off/on together to access certain services, and I would rather make a shortcut to do both, but currently shortcuts only supports enabling/disabling exit nodes.

I like the simplicity of the app and how the UI looks and performs. I like that I can use the iOS shortcuts app to automatically turn on when I browse the web or open other apps on my phone but I loose like 50% of battery within 2 hours of it on and would not like to be near a charger or have to purchase a battery bank to keep using this service. Great service overall though.

The networking aspect of this app is exactly what you’d expect, it functions great. The problems are with the interface itself. The main toggle switch has poor state management and often displays “needs authorization” when it is just waiting for the network on a cold start, for example. It also lacks support for switching between multiple accounts. This is a feature on the desktop clients and it makes it difficult and time consuming to have to purge my session entirely and re-auth everytime I want to switch organizations, since I use TS at work and personally as well. Please address these issues as soon as possible if you are not already. I believe they are most certainly a common frustration for regular users.

I’m running the latest iOS and sometimes I’ll notice conductivity isn’t working through Tailscale. When I open my phone up, I tap on Tailscale app it says loading… then connectivity works. So the VPN isn’t always connected. This bug should probably be fixed or looked at. It is intermittent, but frequent enough to be noticed.

Tailscale is an incredible service that keeps getting better. The iOS UI in version 1.46 got a much needed overhaul, and it looks GOOD. Leaving on all the time does cause an increased battery drain, but that is the only detractor to Tailscale, and it’s certainly no worse than other VPN options

For everyone complaining about battery usage it only happens if you leave the VPN on (I saw ~20-40m/hr background activity which was 1-3% of battery) however if you turn off the switch in the app there is no background usage.

I had tried to use the WireGuard app before, and it was just too much of a hassle, tailscale is so much more user friendly and works really cleanly on my Linux devices and iPad. Anyways I saw this with a few amount of reviews and thought I should help out a little.

Excellent performance with my home Linux server acting as an exit node to my home network. It just works and even has a kill switch if connectivity suspends. Was very easy to setup

Tailscale is absolutely wonderful. A fantastic product with a well thought out user experience. I’m a super fan. Unfortunately on iOS, the application often disconnects from the VPN and you need to reopen the application to reconnect throughout the day.

As a former IPsec user, this app makes remote access and routing so much easier. I see where all the hype comes from. I was leery at first but I should have switched long ago.

This app and service is on another level compared to similar apps and services. I absolutely love it.

There is a lot of paid VPN but this one is best for anyone who wants to setup VPN to access home network along with setup Pi Hole to block ads when outside the home network.

I really appreciate the fix for connection interruption when switching from Wifi to Cellular.

The new shortcut button option is clutch!!!

No more port forwarding! Connect your devices as you do on your home or office Lan. Solves so many networking problems with security and remote access.

It’s great for what I am using it for, but the only issue is that I have to uninstall and re install to re-authenticate which is annoying but something I will put up with.

Simply incredible. Probably the most impressive software I’ve ever used from a security, performance, and easy-to-use perspective.

2-step account login

I love the functionality that Tailscale provides, but the IOS app will not disconnect. I use the slider to disconnect, and it immediately reconnects. The only way I can get the app to disconnect is to delete the app, which makes Tailscale not very convenient to us on iOS.

Thank you for adding VPN on demand! Been loving Tailscale so far after switching from a traditional VPN for my road warrior setup. Super duper easy to configure and awesome throughput. Try this!

works great so far, but does have battery drain issues. so i’ll need to use something else on my mobile devices until it’s fixed

I used to manage my own WireGuard setup and it was super flaky. This solved all my problems. Kinda crazy how well it just works. Well done

Quick and easy to setup, amazing capabilities, and all for free. What more could I ask for?

Tailscale is a fantastic service but this iOS app is garbage: it eats battery like crazy. As a data point, Tailscale ate ~25% battery on average in last 10 days. I only have 5 machines in my tailnet, Tailscale was on all the time but only for routing my DNS queries to my home network. (No exit node etc. usage.)

Great app but uses hugeeeeee amount of battery. Wish they fix this problem

This app is so easy to use and helpful. i’m looking apps for almost for one year, but these app save me.👌

This is easy and useful.

I’m plagued by the “needs authentication” bug if I ever disconnect and don’t swipe away the app from memory/background I have to do this for it to clear

This was a very good app until the last update, now I’m not able to connect at all. And I’m without a VPN. Please fix asap, it says at the top need to authenticate.

I love this tool. I can use it on my work laptop from home.

When after use you have to stop on the app and also disconnect the vpn from the iphone settings. Why you have to do this? i don’t know. It also connect to vpn by itself automatic not even doing anything even the app is close.

App spends most of it's time stuck on loading, with no indication of the problem, and no resolution apparent. Was great for the few days it worked though.

Microsoft uses this app to gather way too much data from the user. If you say No to access of our iPhone profile the app throws up an internal server error. No profile data and apparently you can’t use the app. Not a great start, and probably the end for me.

Except for one subnet router this is a vanilla set up at home. As the title says, it just works.

I was recommended this by a fish and a weaboo

It works great right after install, but soon after becomes unresponsive. Not able to connect, reauthenticate, or send a bug report. Tailscale is great but this app needs work.

I cannot connect since I downloaded version 1.46. Gets stuck on log in and it says need authentication. Tried to restart the app a couple of times but that did not work.

I want use it. Then use other tool like outline, but it failed,one time one vpn don’t like Mac OSX which can work together

Whoever had the idea to remove the simple and obvious toggle switch and replace it with a drop-down (hard to find and an extra tap) should be fired. Along with anyone who signed off on it. Was your GUI intern getting bored?

Doesn’t work - just spins saying “Loading” forever both on WiFi and LTE. Connected once then unresponsive from then on. Not a well-designed app.

I keep getting 403 user not allowed to select tailnet. This is for my own tailnet.

Awesome app and concept but currently the app consistently ranks at the top user of battery and cuts my battery life in half. Not convenient to turn the app on ad hoc when I need it.

Connect on demand is even more broken than before the bug fix.