We’re included a less strict variation of our previous VPN DNS leak prevention for third party VPN apps. The new approach only aims to prevent leaks in apps handling DNS configuration correctly. It should avoid causing the compatibility issues which blocked us shipping it before.

We shipped a stricter approach in our 2024050900 release but compatibility issues were reporting during Beta testing so it didn’t reach the Stable channel. It was reverted in 2024051500. Proton VPN may now be compatible with it but not all apps will be so we can’t be that strict.

The hardest part of shipping privacy and security improvements is often fully preserving compatibility with the massive number of Android apps. We try to avoid needing toggles to work around compatibility issues, but we make an exception for apps with memory corruption bugs.

Our changes to this resolved most of the compatibility issues with obscure VPN apps. However, Proton VPN is still partially incompatible and doesn’t work properly for all users with this leak blocking in place. We aren’t sure how to move forward yet. Other apps are compatible.