B6 on Android 15 Beta 2.x with new VPN by Google (One) cannot use private DNS

Support
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Hi there,

Subscriber to B6 (but not VPN) as I’ve been able to use private DNS with my existing Google Fi / One VPN with no issues. However, as we all know, Google is cracking down on third party VPNs for ad blocking, as noted by an article here, and now they have done away with the Google One VPN, instead now offering the “VPN by Google”. And it breaks using Blokada with a custom private DNS entry.

First off, details:

1. Where did you download Blokada from? - Play Store

2. Which device do you use? Do you use a custom ROM? Do you know which OS version you are using?

Pixel 8 Pro
Android 15 (VanillaIceCream) build AP31.240426.023.B4
Blokada v24.2.30

3. Please explain the issue as detailed as possible. Also include patterns you observed (like ‘it only happens on wifi’). The more information the better.

If I enable the private DNS from Blokada, the phone complains that I have no internet access - regardless of if I try to use my home Wi-Fi or my Fi cellular service.

If I set it to automatic or off, I get Internet, but Blokada complains that it cannot start, showing the Almost there! screen with a red “X” next to Activate DNS profile.

Is anyone else seeing this, or is there a viable workaround? If not, is one being developed?

4. Since when are you facing this issue?

Today, as far as I know.

5. Did you already try to solve the issue somehow? If so: please state what you did.

I turned Blokada off, then I think I generated a new private DNS profile to try to use, removed the ‘old’ one, and pasted the ‘new’ one, and it still did not work. I say ‘old’ and ‘new’ because I did not pay close enough attention to see if they were, in fact, different, or not.

2

Just a few minutes ago my phone notified me that a new A15 Beta is ready to install, I’ll give that a shot and see if it changes anything later today.

3

Hey @nkyadav ,

Thanks for reporting this, if I understand correctly, you’re facing connectivity issues after activating the Private DNS with Blokada Cloud.

We will need your log to take a closer look into this, can you please send it over to hello@blokada.org?

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More like it was working before and suddenly stopped working. I suspect the changeover to the new Google VPN was causing issues, combined with the fact that it was on the Android 15 Beta.

I got the latest Beta installed last night, and the VPN issues seem to have resolved.

FWIW, the ‘new’ Google VPN would not work at all, blocking all connections to the web, when trying to use Private DNS, regardless of if it was the custom Blokada DNS server or if it was set to automatic. However, after taking the new Android 15 Beta, not only is it working again, both in automatic and with the Blokada-specific server, I found a few new features I had not seen before, like the ability to exclude apps from the Google VPN (as well as a global setting to always bypass carrier apps), and the ability to set up VPN profiles, also, which I’ll dig into further.

But, at any rate, it’s all seems to be working again, after setting up the private DNS with the Blokada server, starting Blokada, and testing in both Chrome and a game to block ads.

Since I had reset Blokada (including having disabled logging during in my testing), I’m betting the logs went with the reset, but if this issue pops up again, I’ll grab logs and report back.

5

@nkyadav happy to hear that the new update helped.

I hoped to see the logs to understand what exactly was happening but I understand that they were lost with the reset so no worries.

Please let me know if it starts happening again or if you need help with anything else.

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Will do, if anything goes amuck I’ll grab them for sure and send them over.

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