VPNStatus

VPNStatus, a replacement for macOS builtin VPN Status

Blog post: https://blog.timac.org/2018/0719-vpnstatus/

Description

VPNStatus, an application that replicates some functionalities of macOS built-in VPN status menu:

• list the VPN services and their status
• connect to a VPN service
• disconnect from a VPN service
• possibility to auto connect to a VPN service if the application is running
• Completely free (donations welcome) with the source code transparently available

Retry Delay

VPNStatus tries to reconnect to the VPN every 120s by default. You can change this value using a secret preference. To change the retry delay to 30s:

• Quit VPNStatus
• Run this command in a Terminal window:

defaults write org.timac.VPNStatus AlwaysConnectedRetryDelay -int 30

Note that the minimum valid value for AlwaysConnectedRetryDelay is 11. If you use a lower value, the default value (120s) will be used.

Ignored SSIDs

VPNStatus can optionally ignore one or more SSIDs, such that services are not autoconnected when the current Wi-Fi SSID is on the ignored list.

To set the list of ignored SSIDs:

• Quit VPNStatus
• Run this command in a Terminal window:

defaults write org.timac.VPNStatus IgnoredSSIDs "OneSSID,SecondSSID,Third SSID"

With the above example, if the current Wi-Fi network SSID is OneSSID, SecondSSID, or Third SSID, then the VPN will not autoconnect.

If the Wi-Fi network SSID is, say, FourthSSID, the VPN service will autoconnect, because it is not on the list.

Note that SSIDs are case-sensitive.

Hide VPNs

There are some VPN configurations that you might not want to see in VPNStatus. This is the case of third-party content filter configurations like Little Snitch.

By default, VPNStatus will hide the Little Snitch content filter configuration. You can override the preference to hide more VPN configurations. Example:

defaults write org.timac.VPNStatus IgnoredVPNs "Little Snitch,HiddenVPN,AnotherHiddenVPN"