Love ExpressVPN? Want a free month? This tutorial guide will walk you through the steps to connect to a VPN server using ExpressVPN’s OpenVPN configuration files with Tunnelblick on your Mac computer. Tunnelblick is a free, open-source GUI for OpenVPN on OS X. Prefer app setup? See the instructions for app setup for,. Jump to Download the OpenVPN configuration files To set up ExpressVPN OpenVPN with Tunnelblick, you will need to download the OpenVPN configuration files for ExpressVPN. Open the Welcome Email you received when you signed up for ExpressVPN.
Viscosity is an OpenVPN client for Mac and Windows, providing a rich user interface for creating, editing, and controlling VPN connections.
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Click the link in the email. If you can’t find the link,. Once you’ve clicked the link in the welcome email or signed in to the website, click on Set Up on More Devices.
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Click on Manual Config on the left side of the screen and then select the OpenVPN tab on the right. You will first see your username and password and then a list of OpenVPN configuration files.
Find the location(s) you want to connect to (e.g., Los Angeles, New York, Hong Kong), then download and save the.ovpn file(s) to your Downloads folder. You will need these files for.
Note: Please have your username and password ready, as you will be asked to enter them later in the setup process. Download and install Tunnelblick Go to. Download the Tunnelblick installer.dmg file to your Downloads folder. Open the Tunnelblick installer.dmg file from the Downloads folder. Double-click the Tunnelblick icon to begin the installation process. While Tunnelblick is installing, you will see a screen like this: When the installation is complete, you will see this message: “Installation succeeded.” Click Launch.
Set up Tunnelblick with your OpenVPN configuration files The “Welcome to Tunnelblick” screen will ask you if you have any configuration files. You downloaded these in, so click I have configuration files.
Now go to your Downloads folder, and double-click the.ovpn configuration file you want to use. You will be asked if you’d like to install the configuration for all users. Click Only Me or All Users, depending on your preference. You may be required to enter your Mac’s username and password before proceeding.
Enter the information when prompted. When you see the screen that says, “Tunnelblick successfully: installed one configuration”, click OK.
Connect to the VPN server location To connect to the VPN server location, click on the Tunnelblick icon in the top-right corner of your screen. From the dropdown menu, select Connect server location name. When prompted to enter your username and password, enter the ExpressVPN OpenVPN username and password you found.
A notification message will appear to tell you when the connection has been established. Click the x to hide it. Disconnect from the VPN server location To disconnect from the VPN server location, click the Tunnelblick icon in the top-right corner of the screen, then click Disconnect.
Mac OS X Clients and Installation There are three client options for Mac OS X.:. The OpenVPN command line client. Most users prefer a graphical client, so this option will not be covered. Tunnelblick, a free option available for download at the. The commercial.
At the time of this writing, it costs $9 USD for a single seat. If OpenVPN is used frequently, Viscosity is a much nicer client and well worth the cost. Both Tunnelblick and Viscosity are easily installed, with no configuration options during installation. Configuring Viscosity When using the Viscosity client, it can be configured manually or the OpenVPN Client Export package may be used to import the configuration.
Viscosity provides a GUI configuration tool that can be used to generate the underlying OpenVPN client configuration. The CA and certificates can be imported manually, and all of the parameters can be set by hand. This section cover importing a Viscosity bundle from the export package. Download a copy of the Viscosity bundle for the client from the OpenVPN Client Export package. Locate the saved file, which will end in.visc.zip indicating that it is a compressed archive.
Copy this exported bundle to a folder on the Mac. Double click this file and it will expand to Viscosity.visc. Double click Viscosity.visc and Viscosity will open and import the connection as shown in Figure. Viscosity Details Clicking the up/down arrow button in the middle of the details screen displays additional network traffic statistics. This shows the traffic sent within the tunnel (TUN/TAP In and Out), as well as the total TCP or UDP traffic sent including the overhead of the tunnel and encryption.
For connections using primarily small packets the overhead is considerable with all VPN solutions. The stats shown in Figure are from only a few pings traversing the connection. The traffic sent in bringing up the connection is also counted here, so the initial overhead is higher than what it will be after being connected for some time. Also, the typical VPN traffic will have larger packet sizes than 64 byte pings, making the total overhead and difference between these two numbers considerably less.