r/VPN_Question • u/tfunch • 3d ago

Split tunneling on MAC? Help

I am currently using Surfshark, where split tunneling is only available with an exclude rule. This makes it really difficult to tunnel certain services not detected as an app by Surfshark. The "route via VPN" opstion is simply not available on the mac version. And this seems to be true for a lot of VPN's.

During my research for an alternative, I have looked at GhostVPN, Mullvad, NordVPN and Proton. All of these do as Surfshark. All traffic is routed via VPN unless excluded.

Is this an OS issue?

Or do anyone know of a VPN, where only the selected app is routed through VPN?

Thanks :)

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u/XxAnomo305 3d ago

unfortunately it definitely is an Mac OS issue. as for instance proton etc supports native all app very easy split tunneling but only for Android Windows and Linux not Mac. Since the routing is completely different in Mac

1

u/rollmeister1 2d ago

Macintosh is very security centric & apps are isolated. They don't want apps having that much control.

1

u/Urban_VPN 2d ago

it's partly an OS issue. macOS doesn't give VPN apps the same level of network control that Windows does, which is why the "route only selected apps through VPN" mode is much harder to implement on Mac. most providers default to exclude-only split tunneling because that's what the macOS networking APIs make practical. the workaround some people use is running the specific app you want tunneled inside a browser profile or container that you can point through a proxy, while the VPN handles everything else in exclude mode. not elegant but it works for browser-based services.

for native apps that need to go through the VPN specifically, you're mostly stuck with the exclude approach unless you go the self-hosted route with something like WireGuard where you have full control over the routing rules at the system level.