After upgrading to Plus on Android, a few apps no longer work at all, such as Plex with killswitch enabled

This post is a bit of my troubleshooting on the fly and writing it down and observations.

Blokada 5.18, installed directly from blokada.org (android-30 full release), android 11, Xiaomi A3.

I’ve had it working in Libre mode for years, without problem, and i just upgraded to Plus, and now a few apps no longer get any internet AT ALL, such as Plex and Tinder. I haven’t checked all apps. At first google Maps and Keep didn’t get network either but that somehow resolved itself overnight.

This is on mobile data or wifi. The local Plex server on my LAN (wifi) isn’t detected either via plex.

The only other change i made after upgrading to Blokada Plus was to change the DNS on the phone to be private custom with the URI that blokada told me to use, from cloudfare. I’ve since put it back to automatic. I did also enable the killswitch for blokada VPN.
Tinder opens and says “no network” and Plex opens and all of the 5 servers I have access to say “OFFLINE”, including my LAN one.

If I use the app Fing to scan my wifi access point for devices, it picks up only 2 (of like 16), the phone itself and the gateway router. It doesn’t even pick up the range extender it’s connected through.
If i disable the killswitch and blokada it picks up all 16 and things work as per normal, but if I leave the killswitch off and re-enable blokada plus, it picks up all th devices on LAN scan and Plex and Tinder work.

I just re-enabled the killswitch and tinder and Plex no longer work at all either…

What i notice is that when the killswitch is enabled, the blokada log doesn’t even SHOW any attempts to get to x.gotinder(.com or x.plex(.com, but with killswitch off, they’re there.

This is super strange, and I doubt there’s anything easily done about it :frowning:

With Blokada enabled and no killswitch, I cannot download via LAN on plex, to store things for offline viewing, but I CAN via mobile data. This was the same with Blokada Libre. Completely baffling!

I don’t expect the Plex download issue to be solved per se, but after writing this post and putting it all down I’ve figured a few things out, but will post it for the sake of others too.

Another thing was that I excluded Plex the app in Blokada settings, and it made no difference when I had the killswitch enabled.
When I bought this phone years ago it was running Android One. I don’t know if that still exists, and it doesn’t mention it in settings, but I wonder if that’s related to some of the network weirdness.
I don’t recall ever trying the killswitch with Blokada Libre.

Hey Stonedog,

Can you try this link and tell me what your score is:

https://go.blokada.org/test

HI Reda,

On my phone it is 98%, thus only google ads and amazon not blocked:

Hey,
Apparently, you cannot reach local resources because you’ve most likely set a dns other than your standard dns. You should be able to reach their IPs anyway. Big companies like Tinder and Plex tend to block data center IPs hence that might not work using VPN either.
Can you try to use the standard DNS or blokada cloud to be able to reach local resources?

PIA works fine for Plex and Tinder, but i’ll try different DNS settings nd see how it goes.

Okay, so if I disable private DNS AND killsitch, tinder works, and Plex works, although I cannot download/sync items on plex. This happened with Blokada Libre too, and I used to have to connect to PIA VPN to download things over local LAN on plex, for some reason… I"ll keep working on it, since my PIA account is expired.

I have lost track of what you’re talking about.
As far as I’m aware PIA is Public Internet Access. Another third party vpn.
They might use residential IPs to hide the fact that they’re VPN providers. We used to do the same with the partner gateway program which we had to end for the time being due to lots of DCMA notices our partners received. It’ll be back once we find a solution to that.
So blokada+ ≠ PIA hence different results might appear.
What are you referring to as “killswitch”?

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