I’m using Blokada 4 within Android 6.0.1 in a stock Samsung Galaxy S5 and it normally works very well. However, I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that I sometimes wake up in the morning and find that Blokada has de-activated and the key icon is gone from the top of my screen. Once I re-activate Blokada, it normally stays active all day. Here is some info which may be helpful:
I downloaded Blokada from the Blokada site when I was notified that an update was available.
I occasionally charge my phone during the night, but so far I haven’t noticed a correlation between charging and the de-activation. To the best of my knowledge, the de-activation doesn’t occur when I charge my phone during the day.
I have both Ad-blocking and DNS active.
The following settings are turned ON: Start on boot, Background animation, and Keep alive.
I have App Power Saving turned OFF for Blokada.
Blokada is a great app, but this little flaw is frustrating, so I have the following questions:
A) How can I solve this de-activation problem?
B) What is the newest version of Blokada I can use with Android 6.0.1?
I find the google play store sometimes messes around with installed apps when charging, their “play protect” thing I believe, even though I have auto update switched off. Sometimes this ends up with Blokada being deactivated. Maybe you are seeing the same thing?
Thanks for your reply. Is it possible for me to upgrade to Blokada 5.xx while using Android 6.0.1, or am I limited to the Blokada 4.xx version? I want to stay as current as I can until I eventually upgrade this phone to a new one.
Thanks for the idea, but I carefully checked that Blokada was on last night before going to bed and did not charge the phone. Blokada was deactivated in the morning, yet it doesn’t seem to deactivate during the day. I’m baffled.
Thanks for your reply. I neglected to mention that I had looked at that, but when I went to Settings/More Networks/VPN, it lists all installed VPN apps and correctly shows Blokada to be “connected.” When I tap on the 3-dot menu at the upper right, it says “Always-on VPN,” and when I tap on that, it tells me to:
“Select a VPN profile to always stay connected. Network traffic will only be allowed when connected to this VPN.”
However it only offers me one choice, “None,” which is pre-checked, so I have no actual VPN choices from which to select. If I could see Blokada as a choice, I would gladly select it, but my only choice is the previously-selected “None.” Where do I go from this apparent dead-end?
UPDATE
In case it helps to solve the spontaneous Blokada deactivation problem, I’ve carefully checked for the last three nights that Blokada was active on my phone when I went to bed, yet on each of the following mornings I found that Blokada was deactivated. The phone was not being charged on any of those nights, just lying on the night stand untouched.
It’s quite an odd one, to find out why Blokada or the system stopping it. Hmm… oh, does the net connection drop while left or WiFi switch off while asleep (the device & you )?
Thanks for your reply. I’ve never noticed the WiFi switching off during the night. To add to the puzzle, after three sequential mornings of finding that Blokada had shut off during the night, this morning I woke to find that Blokada had NOT deactivated and was busy blocking ads. That’s why I said in the title of this thread, Blokada occasionally deactivates on its own. I just can’t figure out what’s causing it. Sigh!
UPDATE #2
There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to Blokada’s spontaneous deactivation. I’ve recently had 2 or 3 nights in a row during which Blokada kept working and was active in the morning, yet I occasionally find that it has turned off during the day and I have to reactivate it. This is really getting frustrating!
Me, too. Blokada+ 5.11 Android randomly disconnects. Only notifications I get from the app are when Blokada DNS stops working.
As previously recommended I have Don’t Sleep! running. WiFi on and connected to my GB router private 803.11ac network which is provisioned at 255 MBps via GB cable modem with fiber to our demarc.
It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who has experienced this behavior from Blokada. However, I don’t even get a notification when the Blokada DNS service stops working. I just wake up and find the little key icon missing from the top bar on my home screen.
I have phones running Android 7 (LG) which is fine, and vanilla (unmodified) Android 9 and 10, which both exhibit this behaviour. On the same phones, so does DNS66, Adlock, and Adguard full, with its native VPN extension. All phones are unrooted, which doesn’t help, and often isn’t now practicable for an ordinary-level user, and the old devs who used to be expert in the field have given up. My suspicion falls on the os. Clearly it’s a workaround to get ad blocking to work, and hardly encouraged by Google! So it’s flakey; which is hardly a selling point to buy, as I have done, is it? But we do it to help the devs and they need all the encouragement they can get! We just have to bear with it, whilst the devs do their best.
I agree that 5.11 seems to have regressed to needing a reset several times a day or every couple of days, putting Blokada well behind Adguard (which can now run for up to a few weeks) in terms of reliability. Adguard is the bigger operation, and better resourced. But these things change, and come and go. Blokada used to be significantly better. For most of us it’s a luxury, not a matter of life and death, after all, and one of life’s little inconveniences.
I’m just fortunate in being able at the moment to swop between Blokada and Adguard, depending on which is the better-behaved on the day!
My original post related to Blokada 4, but some of the subsequent posts mention Blokada 5. It appears that whatever is causing this deactivation issue is common to both versions. I mention this in the hope that it may give someone a clue to solving this problem.
It’s been over a month since my original post and so far no one seems to have an answer for this problem which I and others are having. Have I posted it in the wrong place?
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