I never thought I'd have to deal with this. I've been using Android VPNs for years, and after buying a new car, I wanted to hit the road and use Sleep Token. As you can imagine, I ran into a problem: Android Auto blocks your connection if it detects a VPN.
This means that you, or whoever is in the passenger seat, will have to fumble around with your phone trying to disconnect from your VPN and then reconnect your Bluetooth to regain connection, just to listen to music or use Google Maps.
Android Auto blocks VPNs
Android Auto will completely block your connection if it detects a VPN connection, and the little help that exists on this topic simply tells you to disconnect from your VPN altogether. Sorry, Android, but I'm not going to sacrifice my privacy for such an absurd and illogical reason.
This brings me to a question I haven't honestly answered yet: “Why does Android Auto block VPNs?” Surely there's no point in blocking a VPN when you're accessing your own car, and having a non-local IP address doesn't really matter because you're connecting via Bluetooth. I saw something that said that can It may be because it can't read the IP of your car's head unit, but that still doesn't make sense since everything goes to and from your phone.
I suspect that Google blocks VPNs because it can't collect data when it's encrypted. However, I suspect that the real reason is that Android simply doesn't care about VPNs.
As frustrating as this is, there are is Something you can do about it.
How to fix Android Auto not working with VPN
If you're tired of disconnecting your VPN to connect only to your car, there's only one consistent solution: split tunnelThis is a process that directs specific applications outside the encrypted VPN tunnel. It is less ideal from a privacy perspective because, ideally, you would want the connection to remain encrypted. ButAt least it means you won't have to deal with that annoying red banner on your phone.
Here you can see the Surfshark Bypasser (split tunneling) menu on my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
It's pretty easy to set up split tunneling for Android Auto – just follow these three steps:
- Go to your VPN settings and look for split tunneling settings.
- Find Android Auto and exclude it from the VPN tunnel (you may need to allow system apps to be visible).
- Use your phone, car and VPN normally.
VPNs that work with Android Auto
I always have a VPN running on my phone and have found these three to be the most reliable for Android Auto:
Bottom line: I want my privacy.
I don't see a logical reason why Android Auto should… need to block VPN connections when connected to the phone via Bluetooth, and we shouldn't be punished or harassed for investing in our privacy. I wish Google would remove this bug entirely and allow VPN connections for Android Auto.
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