On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Network. Open Network preferences for me. Select your VPN service in the list at the left. If there’s a Configuration pop-up menu, click it, then choose a configuration. There may be only one configuration available. Click Connect.
Since the U.S. Government passed legislation allowing Internet service providers to sell their users’ browsing history, the web has exploded with conversations about.
The best method is to use a VPN to protect your Internet traffic. A VPN makes it impossible for your ISP to spy on you by passing all your web traffic through an encrypted “tunnel,” hiding the contents of your web browsing session from view. Getting a VPN set up typically isn’t too challenging. You’ll need to sign up with a VPN provider first, and then follow their setup instructions.
Most VPN providers supply their customers with custom VPN clients to connect to their network. This software ranges from inoffensive to non-functional, and it can be a point of frustration for users. If you’re annoyed by your provider’s software, you probably don’t have to use it.
Most providers also support OpenVPN, which is an open-source VPN application that runs through a separate software client. The best-knowing application to set up OpenVPN configurations on your Mac is, and it’s excellent. Follow the steps below to set up OpenVPN configurations with Tunnelblick and ditch your VPN provider’s clunky client. Set Up OpenVPN with Tunnelblick To set up OpenVPN on your Mac, you’ll need to install Tunnelblick from the developer’s website and install the necessary OpenVPN configuration files from your VPN provider. And install the most recent stable version of Tunnelblick from the developer’s website. The first time you open Tunnelblick, you’ll see a message about requiring VPN configuration files. Click I have configuration files – you’ll get these from your VPN provider in the next steps.
The next window explains how to set up OpenVPN configuration files. The above-mentioned OpenVPN configuration files should be available from your VPN provider. You’ll likely received a ZIP archive containing a variety of files with the.ovpn extension. These files include all the data about your VPN services that Tunnelblick will need to get the connection functioning. To obtain these files, you might need to contact customer service, visit your VPN’s support pages, or do some Googling. After you’ve downloaded the necessary OpenVPN files, open Tunnelblick’s configuration screen by clicking on its icon in the menu bar. Select VPN Details from the drop down menu.
To add configuration files to Tunnelblick, drag and drop the. Ovpn files from Finder into Tunnelblick’s left-side menu pane. Do not drag over any other file types, like.crt or.pem files.
Tick “Apply to All” and click “Only Me” in the next window. The configurations will automatically be added to Tunnelblick’s menu and available for connection. Connecting & Disconnecting from VPN Configurations Now that we’ve set up OpenVPN configurations, we can connect to them from the same Tunnelblick menu. To start a new VPN connection, click on the Tunnelblick menubar icon and click on a configuration. Enter your username and password for your VPN provider and click OK.
A small notification window will pop up in the upper-right showing your VPN connection status. Once the connection is complete, the notification’s text will turn green and the window will fade away. The Tunnelblick icon will also animate while the connection processes. When Tunnelblick’s icon turns black instead of light grey, you’ve connected successfully.
To see your connection status and public IP address, click the Tunnelblick icon and look at the first line. To disconnect, click that same menu item labelled Disconnect All. Sharing Credentials Across VPN Configurations If your VPN provider has multiple exit nodes or configurations, you can set up Tunnelblick to use the same login credentials for all of them. This saves you constantly retyping your credentials, which can be long and hard to remember.
In testing, this process has proven a little buggy. If possible, set up sharing credentials immediately after you’ve installed your VPN configurations to avoid any potential issues. Click on the Tunnelblick icon in the menu bar.
Select VPN Details to open the configuration menu. In the configuration menu, click on the Settings tab. Then click the button labelled Advanced to open the advanced configuration menu. Under the VPN Credentials tab, tick the box next to All configurations use Common credentials.
This will set all your VPN configurations to use the same username and password. To save the username and password that the credentials will use, log in to a VPN connection that doesn’t already have saved credentials. Type in your username and password. Tick Save in Keychain under both the username and password to save your login information as common credentials. After you log in, Tunnelblick will save those credentials and apply them to any other VPN connections you initiate.
Conclusion Tunnelblick is a strong OpenVPN client for macOS that can handle multiple configurations at one time. It can also help improve security and ease of use if your VPN provider’s client is buggy or badly designed. Just get OpenVPN configuration files from your VPN provider and you’ll be good to go. You might also like.
Disclaimer: Installation and use of any software made by third party developers is at your own discretion and liability. We share our best practices with third party software but do not provide customer support for them. Please Note: This guide assumes that you are using Safari and have 'Allow files to Open/Execute (aka Safe Files) upon download completion' enabled. If you are not, you may have issues with Step 9 ongoing. Download the Latest TunnelBlick install from.
Double Click the Tunnelblick dmg from your downloads folder to mount the image. Double Click on the Tunnelblick icon to install. If you get a notice that 'Tunnelblick is an Application downloaded from the Internet' Click Open to confirm that you want to Open it. Type your computer Admin password to allow the Install. Click Launch. Click I Have Configuration Files.
Download the Configuration Files. Rename this downloaded file as openvpn.tblk and on the window that appears, choose “Add” to accept the file extension change.
Double click openvpn.tblk, and allow the option to apply installation of multiple files. Tunnelblick will ask if you want to add for All users, or just your user. Enter your computer Admin password to allow the configuration file to be added. Click the Tunnelblick icon in the Menu bar to connect. Enter your Username and password when prompted. Enable port forwarding in the application by entering the Advanced area, enabling port forwarding and selecting one of the following gateways: CA Toronto CA Montreal CA Vancouver DE Berlin DE Frankfurt Sweden Switzerland France Czech Republic Spain Romania Israel After enabling port forwarding and re-connecting to one of the above gateways, please hover your mouse over the System Tray or Menu Bar icon to reveal the tooltip which will display the port number. You can then enter this port into your software.
Port Forwarding reduces privacy. For maximum privacy, please keep port forwarding disabled. The dns leak protection feature activates VPN dns leak protection. This ensures that DNS requests are routed through the VPN. This enables the greatest level of privacy and security but may cause connectivity issues in non-standard network configurations. This can be enabled and disabled in the Windows application, while it is enabled by default on our macOS application.
We use our own private DNS servers for your DNS queries while on the VPN. After connecting we set your operating system's DNS servers to 209.222.18.222 and 209.222.18.218. When using a DNS Leak testing site you should expect to see your DNS requests originate from the IP of the VPN gateway you are connected to. If you change your DNS servers manually or if for some other reason they are changed this does not necessarily mean your DNS is leaking. Even if you use different DNS servers the queries will still be routed through the VPN connection and will be anonymous.