Mozilla blog post announcing the bundle: The best gift for anyone who wants to feel safer when they go online: Mozilla privacy products Also, TIL about Relay's phone number masking:...
I haven’t used Relay, but I’ve been on Mozilla VPN pretty much since they announced it and have been very happy with it. There was a recent hiccup where their iOS app broke on the upgrade to iOS...
I haven’t used Relay, but I’ve been on Mozilla VPN pretty much since they announced it and have been very happy with it. There was a recent hiccup where their iOS app broke on the upgrade to iOS 16 and it took them a bit of time to fix, but other than that it’s been pretty smooth and seamless. I really like that there’s an option to use ad-blocking and anti-tracking DNS while connected.
Also, for those that don’t know, Mozilla VPN isn’t its own platform but is actually just rebranded Mullvad. It’s possible to buy Mullvad directly and get effectively the same product with a different skin, but I like supporting Mozilla so I’m happy to pay for their version.
I checked my stats and Safari accounts for ~30% of my battery usage, while Mozilla VPN accounts for ~20%, which does seem quite high, but I don’t have numbers to compare it to. What do yours look...
I checked my stats and Safari accounts for ~30% of my battery usage, while Mozilla VPN accounts for ~20%, which does seem quite high, but I don’t have numbers to compare it to. What do yours look like with Mullvad?
For more perspective, my browser is 94% of my phone's battery usage over the last 10 days, but my VPN (which is almost always active) is only 2%. So given your 60/40 split between browser and VPN,...
For more perspective, my browser is 94% of my phone's battery usage over the last 10 days, but my VPN (which is almost always active) is only 2%. So given your 60/40 split between browser and VPN, I think something is definitely going wrong with your install of Mozilla VPN, or its (or your phone's) power usage reporting. Because I highly doubt that sort of incredibly high power usage from Mozilla VPN would go unnoticed and unreported by people if it was the norm.
I suspect the OP is using a different phone than you, but maybe still try this to fix it:
I would like to clarify, the VPN shouldn't be draining your battery considerably.
When you use the Mozilla VPN to connect to the Internet, you use the IP address of one of our encrypted servers instead of your real IP address, this will throw off data collectors who profile you based on your location.
Try signing out of the Mozilla VPN (you can do this by going to the gear icon on the top right of the application, then scrolling down to "Sign out"), uninstalling it, re-downloading it, and reinstalling it. The sign out is an important part of the process due to deleting some files that otherwise don't get purged. This usually resolves these kinds of issues.
@cfabbro @Octofox I ran the steps mentioned above (logout, uninstall, reinstall). I only have one day of data to show for it, but in the past 24 hours Safari was 33% of my battery, while Mozilla...
I ran the steps mentioned above (logout, uninstall, reinstall). I only have one day of data to show for it, but in the past 24 hours Safari was 33% of my battery, while Mozilla VPN was only 5%, which is a huge improvement.
Could be a coincidence, or it could be that those steps really did cut down on the battery usage. I’ll try to remember to come back and give the rundown after 10 full days.
!Remindme 10 days... Damnit, wrong site! :P But TBH, I think having a similar bot, or built-in function here no Tildes would be really nice, so I just made a Gitlab issue for it. Pretty please,...
!Remindme 10 days... Damnit, wrong site! :P
But TBH, I think having a similar bot, or built-in function here no Tildes would be really nice, so I just made a Gitlab issue for it. Pretty please, @Deimos? ;)
I set a calendar reminder — the manual RemindMe, lol. 10 days out and my stats are: Safari: 46% Mozilla VPN: 10% So, that did make a huge difference, but it’s still not the low amount reported by...
I set a calendar reminder — the manual RemindMe, lol.
10 days out and my stats are:
Safari: 46%
Mozilla VPN: 10%
So, that did make a huge difference, but it’s still not the low amount reported by you and others.
That seems higher than it should be. What phone do you use? When you use a VPN, when you make a network request, the OS will allow for the VPN to intercept that request. It'll wrap it up and...
That seems higher than it should be. What phone do you use? When you use a VPN, when you make a network request, the OS will allow for the VPN to intercept that request. It'll wrap it up and encrypt it with AES. Then, instead of sending it to the original destination, it'll send it to the VPN's server, which will unwrap it and make the "real" request.
So the only computational overhead I can imagine is the AES, but AES is so omnipresent that all devices should have hardware acceleration to make it practically free.
Mozilla blog post announcing the bundle:
The best gift for anyone who wants to feel safer when they go online: Mozilla privacy products
Also, TIL about Relay's phone number masking:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mask-your-phone-number-relay-phone-masking
I haven’t used Relay, but I’ve been on Mozilla VPN pretty much since they announced it and have been very happy with it. There was a recent hiccup where their iOS app broke on the upgrade to iOS 16 and it took them a bit of time to fix, but other than that it’s been pretty smooth and seamless. I really like that there’s an option to use ad-blocking and anti-tracking DNS while connected.
Also, for those that don’t know, Mozilla VPN isn’t its own platform but is actually just rebranded Mullvad. It’s possible to buy Mullvad directly and get effectively the same product with a different skin, but I like supporting Mozilla so I’m happy to pay for their version.
How do you find the battery life? I gave up using Mullvad because it used a huge amount of power in the background.
I checked my stats and Safari accounts for ~30% of my battery usage, while Mozilla VPN accounts for ~20%, which does seem quite high, but I don’t have numbers to compare it to. What do yours look like with Mullvad?
Oof. That’s a huge difference. I guess Mozilla VPN really is much more power hungry.
For more perspective, my browser is 94% of my phone's battery usage over the last 10 days, but my VPN (which is almost always active) is only 2%. So given your 60/40 split between browser and VPN, I think something is definitely going wrong with your install of Mozilla VPN, or its (or your phone's) power usage reporting. Because I highly doubt that sort of incredibly high power usage from Mozilla VPN would go unnoticed and unreported by people if it was the norm.
I suspect the OP is using a different phone than you, but maybe still try this to fix it:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1328352
Thanks for the help (again), cfabbro!
I’ve followed those steps and will report back in a couple of days once I can gauge the new usage.
@cfabbro
@Octofox
I ran the steps mentioned above (logout, uninstall, reinstall). I only have one day of data to show for it, but in the past 24 hours Safari was 33% of my battery, while Mozilla VPN was only 5%, which is a huge improvement.
Could be a coincidence, or it could be that those steps really did cut down on the battery usage. I’ll try to remember to come back and give the rundown after 10 full days.
!Remindme 10 days... Damnit, wrong site! :P
But TBH, I think having a similar bot, or built-in function here no Tildes would be really nice, so I just made a Gitlab issue for it. Pretty please, @Deimos? ;)
I set a calendar reminder — the manual RemindMe, lol.
10 days out and my stats are:
Safari: 46%
Mozilla VPN: 10%
So, that did make a huge difference, but it’s still not the low amount reported by you and others.
At least it helped. But yeah that is still a bit high. I wonder what Mozilla does differently.
Yeah around 15% is what I see for Mullvad. It’s a significant issue imo.
That seems higher than it should be. What phone do you use? When you use a VPN, when you make a network request, the OS will allow for the VPN to intercept that request. It'll wrap it up and encrypt it with AES. Then, instead of sending it to the original destination, it'll send it to the VPN's server, which will unwrap it and make the "real" request.
So the only computational overhead I can imagine is the AES, but AES is so omnipresent that all devices should have hardware acceleration to make it practically free.
I’m on an iPhone 11.
Also, see my latest post here. The heavy battery consumption might have been an app issue that has since been fixed.
That's very concerning.
Why is them offering a bundle for their services "concerning"?