Some context. I’m on a rolling contract with my SIM card provider that gives me 10GB data per month + 60GB of so-called “media bundle”, whereby all Facebook, Whatsapp and YouTube content not eat into my 10GB monthly allowance, but instead ouf of the monthly 60GB media bundle allowance. That gives me total of 70GB per month.
If I watch YouTube with ProtonVPN (and I assume this would be the same with other VPNs) on when I’m out and about and using my data, the YouTube traffic will be considered “roaming data” and be deducted out of my 10GB monthly data instead of the 60GB media bundle. Not good.
When I switch ProtonVPN off before starting to consume YouTube, my service provider will correctly deduct YouTube traffic out of my media bundle because I’m detected as being still in the country. Good.
TL;DR: I’d like to have the traffic generated by the YouTube app excluded from being tunnelled through ProtonVPN. Is this what’s called split-tunnelling? I understand that Proton are currently working on a solution, is that correct?
I cannot tell when exactly split-tunneling will roll out since it is in development stage, but this feature will be available on Android sometime in mid/late June, Windows will follow afterwards as well.
Not entirely sure, but afaik it’s a bit easier on Android. The ProtonVPN App doesn’t support it, yet, but the OpenVPN for Android App does.
Set it up with this guide: How to manually set up OpenVPN on Android | Proton VPN
Then go in the profile, go to “Allowed Apps” and check Youtube so it gets excluded from the VPN.
Yes, it is called split-tunneling and you can enable it using OpenVPN app, which is compatible with ProtonVPN.
Alternatively, you can use a different provider such as IVPN which already has split-tunneling as a feature in their native Android client.
A partial solution, while you wait, would be to sign up for a free Tunnelbear account. If you send out one tweet per month your free 500MB gets upped to 1.5GB.
I have the paid, unlimited version, but I use what they call “Split Bear” all the time.
I have the paid version of PureVPN, as well, and they offer split tunneling. I’m pretty sure it’s available on the free version, too, so that might help close the gap while you wait on Proton.