In November, we published a winter roadmap outlining our planned product updates. Now, as the days get longer and the weather warmer, we’d like to update you on recent product improvements built to make your life easier, more private, and more productive.
Powerful new tools for Linux
Linux matters to us, which is why Proton VPN is still one of the few VPN services out there to offer a full GUI Linux app. Our team of Linux engineers have been working hard to bring this app to full feature parity with our other apps, giving you more control over your privacy. We’ve even brought new features to Linux before they’re available across most other platforms. These include:
Custom DNS
With support for Custom DNS on Linux, you now have the flexibility to choose your preferred third-party service to resolve your DNS queries.
Proton VPN’s NetShield Ad-blocker DNS filtering feature is highly effective at blocking ads, malware, and trackers. However, dedicated DNS services often offer advanced DNS filtering features such as child safety (“net nanny”) protection, customized blocklists, and the ability to manually whitelist and blacklist domains.
Learn how to use custom DNS on Linux
Port forwarding
One of our most requested features, port forwarding on Linux means you can now download files over BitTorrent and other P2P protocols much faster than before. It can also improve your online gaming performance.
Learn more about how port forwarding works
IPv6 support
IPv6 support ensures our Linux app works for the growing number of people with IPv6-only internet connections.
New apps bring features you need to your fingertips
Following last year’s introduction of our all-new Android app, we’ve been keen to bring you the same modern design and intuitive-to-use experience on all Proton VPN apps. We’re therefore excited to announce that its now available on our Windows and iOS apps.
The Windows app is optimized for desktop experience, placing our advanced features front and center to help you understand and make full use of them. With it, you can know at-a-glance that you’re protected by Proton VPN with a map showing your connection location, easily track how many ads and trackers NetShield Ad-blocker has blocked — and how much data this has saved, pin your favorite recent VPN connections and profiles for easy one-tap access, and much more.
The new iOS app now provides the same core mobile experience as our Android app, and both have been improved and refined, all thanks to enthusiastic feedback from the Proton VPN community.
We’ve introduced brand new widgets for Android and iOS. These widgets can be placed anywhere on your Home screen, making it easy to see if you’re connected and providing convenient one-tap access to connections and profiles without opening the Proton VPN app.
Quality-of-life improvements across the board
Improvements to our backend infrastructure don’t make the headlines, but they give you more options and provide numerous ways to make using our service a better experience. We’ve made in the last few months too many such improvements to mention here, but highlights include:
- Improved anti-censorship capabilities that make it easier to access Proton VPN from restrictive countries.
- Support for another 20+ streaming services, allowing you to watch your favorite films, shows, and sports events safely and securely with Proton VPN.
- We now run 12,000+ servers in 117 countries worldwide (including 2,300+ free servers in five countries). This increases your connection options and reduces the average server load, ensuring a better and more reliable service for everyone.
And the rest
We’ve also made improvements on the following platforms:
Windows
- ARM support, so you can use Proton VPN on the new generation of Windows laptops.
- Improved VPN profiles that give you the power to Proton VPN the way you want to. VPN profiles can now be pinned to the Home screen for instant access.
Android
- Custom DNS, so you can choose your preferred DNS service on your Android device.
- Improved VPN profiles, similar to our improvements on Windows. You can also add VPN profiles to the new Android widget for one-tap connect-and-go.
- IPv6 support.
Browser extensions
Multiple improvements across the board for even more robust connection stability and reliability.
Mobile apps
- Battery improvements.
With much more to come
As you can see, we’ve been busy, and have hit most (and in some cases exceeded) targets we set for our winter roadmap. Unfortunately, we’re sorry to say that we were slightly overoptimistic on the timetable for delivering features such as Custom DNS, split tunneling, and port forwarding on macOS, and a guest mode for iOS and iPadOS. Development on these features is advanced, but we want to ensure they are ready before releasing them to our community.
The year is still young, and here at Proton VPN we’re excited about all the new features coming your way soon, including IPv6 support on Windows, split tunneling on Linux, the promised features for our Apple apps, and much more.
We’ll soon be publishing our 2025 spring and summer roadmap, so stay tuned for more news on upcoming developments. To tell us what you think about our recent improvements or to suggest new features you’d like to see, join our community at protonmail.uservoice.com(neues Fenster).
