Mozilla VPN on Android turns itself off once or twice a day
When I installed Mozilla VPN a few months ago on my Android device, I marked it as an "always-on VPN" and configured Android to "block any connections without VPN" for best security. It worked great and it was no fuss! Head and shoulders above my previous VPN provider which regularly required re-authentication.
But since some time in the past month, I'll turn on my phone to discover a notification that I am disconnected from my VPN. I have to re-open the Mozilla VPN and switch the slider back on, and then a flood of stale messages appear. This seems to happen once or twice a day, and it prevents me from receiving important e-mails and messages in a timely manner. It's so bad I have had to disable the "block any connections without VPN" setting which renders the whole exercise pointless.
How can I fix it so Mozilla VPN stays connected all the time like it used to?
All Replies (5)
Hey, Often there are manufacturer's like Xiaomi who allow you to lock an app in the recent page thus even if you clear the apps in the recent page that particular app would stay there. So check if there is a similar option for your device. Also go into Settings>> Installed Apps>> (App you are looking for)>> Check the autostart option if there is any. Also in the same page Check the option of battery optimization to no optimization for the particular app. Some manufacturer's like Xiaomi have a really aggressive battery saving optimization feature which force closes apps running in the background, granting autostart access to the same app should solve this problem.
Best Regards, Mamoon
Thanks for the well-intentioned reply, Mamoon. I don't have a Xiaomi. I have a Moto G7 Plus. There is no function to lock or autostart an app, even in the developer options. My battery is always kept above 50% and my typical memory usage is 2.6GB of 4.0GB. I'm not comfortable with the suggestion that a background service that (should) operate at a low level in the network stack like this one would be subject to arbitrary shutdown by the OS.
It seems like the Mozilla VPN service has been granted no more permission than a gaudy bauble app like Candy Crush. For example, when I hit the left arrow icon after loading MVPN, the process dies immediately instead of remaining resident. It makes me think that the developers neglected to require some key permissions.
I made one change: I switched the battery optimization setting for Mozilla VPN to 'not optimized'. I will post in a day or two if that solves the problem.
In the mean time, are you sure this behaviour is not intended by the developer? It worked fine until a month or so ago when that new version hit. The motive would likely be money: users streaming endless gigabytes of youtube through the VPN they forgot about is expensive, and bean-counters could be easily be tempted to cripple always-on functionality to save a few bucks.
I understand your concern Gary. It can be quite frustrating to start a VPN app every 10 minutes or so. The developers do their best to provide the best end user experience but at times that comes with a cost (bugs). Let me know if the problem was solved with the no battery optimization feature for the particular app.
No, it didn't work. The VPN switched off again for no reason despite the battery optimization adjustment.
I just restarted my phone and saw two interesting notifications:
1. "Mozilla VPN is running in the background" and also 2. "Disconnected from always-on VPN".
From this I can only conclude that Mozilla VPN intentionally doesn't turn itself on without manual intervention, and that it's broken for my purposes.
That's really unfortunate. So far the steps I mentioned above worked for majority of the users. I hope other contributor's can help you find a fix for this issue.