Proton VPN / UX improvement

Design
1

This guide works fine

But UX in Jolla Phone (2026) is guite a bad at the moment. Finally managed to enter OpenVPN user name and password by copying those to Notes app and adding a separator and using systrm clipboard. As the usr/pwd are so cryptic, only way to use VPN is to activate Remember credentials for the VPN configuration. Which is security issue IMO.

Split screen or retaining usr/pwd until login initiation even going out of Settings app would make this experience much better.

Or why not try to get Proton VPN app working on Sailfish OS. There is, however, only minor advantage on this approach as you can store multiple OpenVPN configs to the phone.

Android APP from Aurora store is not working.

2

Citation/reasoning needed. Opinions don’t count. You are not signing in to you home or company network, you are just surfing the internet with another IP.

I think only you understand what you are trying to say here.
Remember; nobody has any specific knowledge about your situation.

The Android app? That’s not going to happen. SFOS is not Android. VPNs are handled by the actual OS, not the AppSupport container.

6 Likes
3
  1. Get OpenVPN configuration file as explained behind the link. On the 1st message in this thread.
  2. Try to insert your username and password from a password manager (trough the clipboard)

You can not, because username and password is always cleared when you exit the VPN settings.

Solutions I proposed for Settings >> VPN >> OpenVPN:

  1. Split screen (in order to have Settings app open/active all the time → no clearing of usr/pwd between fetching those)
  2. Not clearing username and pwd until connection is tried (and is not set to be kept)
  3. Porting Proton VPN app Sailfish OS (might be too resource intensive to Jolla/Sailfish to do it, but maybe Proton would? Easily configurable split VPN would be nice to have.)
  4. Allowing AOSP VPN apps to work on Sailfish (unlikely to happen, agreed)
4

Why don’t you ask proton if they are willing to release a native proton vpn app, especially if you are a paying customer? I don’t see why jolla should program apps for other companies.

5

You’re right, the username and password dialog shows up as a pop-up, but that means you can’t switch to a different application because then the pop-up closes. The problem is that a disappearing pop-up doesn’t work well when you need to enter more than one potentially long and complex string.
This flow should definitely be improved, but you can work around the issue as follows:

  1. Add ‘VPN’ to your Top menu shortcuts. (Settings → Top menu)
  2. Open your password manager to the VPN credentials.
  3. Open the Top menu and tap the VPN shortcut.
  4. Manually enter username and password which are hopefully still visible. If they aren’t, you could open the VPN pop-up on the home screen and use the password manager’s cover to manually copy the credentials. If you use the native application ownKeepass, it has a nice cover view with the credentials clearly legible.