A VPN is great at hiding your traffic from your internet provider and anyone on the same Wi-Fi. It’s less great when it slows down a video call, makes your weather app think you’re in another country, or stops your laptop from seeing the office printer. Split tunneling fixes that by letting you decide what goes through the VPN and what doesn’t, without switching the VPN off and on all day. WIRED’s David Nield calls it the most useful VPN feature most people never touch.
The two kinds you’ll see
- App-based: pick apps that use the VPN (or that skip it). Your banking app stays protected; your game or streaming app gets full speed. This is the most common option.
- URL-based: rules by website domain instead of by app. Keep a search engine or webmail inside the VPN, and let a local news or showtimes site go direct.
Business VPNs may also use route-based rules (by IP range) or policy-based rules. Those are usually set by IT, not by you.
Turn it on
- ProtonVPN (Windows): on the main screen, open Split tunneling from the feature list on the right and enable it. Choose either “include only these apps” or “exclude these apps.”
- NordVPN (Windows): click the gear icon at the bottom left, open Split tunneling and flip the toggle, then pick your apps.
- Other VPNs: look in Settings for “split tunneling,” “bypass,” or “app exceptions.” It’s often on paid plans only.
- On phones: Android generally allows per-app rules. iPhones are more limited, and you’ll usually only be able to exclude websites or IP addresses, not apps.
A sensible starter setup
- Inside the VPN: browser, email, banking, anything you use on public Wi-Fi.
- Outside the VPN: games, video calls if they stutter, local services like printers and smart-home apps, and location-based apps (weather, ticketing).
For IT teams
If you run a company VPN, document which traffic must stay in the tunnel (internal apps, admin consoles) before anyone enables split tunneling. Excluding the wrong app can send sensitive traffic over the open internet.
The takeaway
Set your rules once and you’ll rarely need to revisit them. You get privacy where it matters and speed everywhere else.
Based on reporting by WIRED.
