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by twojacobtwo 1531 days ago
I've been using the app for a couple of years now and I have mostly enjoyed the experience relative to the few other VPN solutions I've tried (OpenVPN, Nord (old version), ProtonVPN).

Things I mostly like:

- The relative simplicity of the app interface (though 'advanced' settings should just be a sub-section of 'preferences')

- How quickly/easily I can get connected (download, paste in account #, click connect - or change location.

- Relatively easy split-tunneling

- Easy switch between OpenVPN and Wireguard protocols

- Easy local network sharing (preference toggle)

- Tracker and ad block options (have not tested efficacy, appears to be DNS-based)

- Internet kill switch (will not fall back to non-vpn connections if set)

Things I don't like:

- Can cause issues on boot/reboot if kill switch is enabled (Windows - disable kill switch, restart app, re-enable kill switch)

- Limited options for mobile apps (and some unexpected disconnections on android)

- No configuration of app layout or color scheme

- Somewhat annoying upgrade (not bad, just no in-place upgrade solution)

1 comments

The Mullvad app is huge ~100MB which is odd for what it needs to do.
My mullvad installation on Windows has 258MB but memory footprint is low. I find 5 entries in the task manager with a total of 14.6MB with active connection.
Maybe not Electron, then. Perhaps I'm confusing it with ExpressVPN's first-party app, which definitely was Electron when I tried them a few years back.
It does use electron. The source code is available on github.

https://github.com/mullvad/mullvadvpn-app

I believe it's Electron-based, which is another reason I've hesitated to try it out. I like Electron - from the developer's perspective, it's great! - but I do still try to avoid its resource impact until there's a compelling reason to take the hit.
That is one of the nitpicks that I missed, along with their downloads being excruciatingly slow when already connected to the service, for whatever reason (I may just be doing something wrong).
I've noticed that as well. The trick as I found (and even recommended by their support) is to download from their GitHub repo.