Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Multiple VPN providers are reporting that Android 16 has a months-old bug that can silently break VPN connections without warning.
- The issue appears to affect multiple VPNs like Proton, Mullvad, WireGuard, TunnelBear, and possibly other, with users also reporting the bug.
- Google has acknowledged the reports but hasn’t provided a fix or clear timeline yet.
Multiple major VPN providers are reporting that Android 16 has a bug that’s quietly breaking their VPN apps and potentially leaving users exposed.
The bug reportedly affects Android 16’s network stack and can trigger after a VPN app is updated, causing the app to stop working properly in the background without any warning to the user.
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Proton VPN highlighted the issue in a series of posts on X, saying it first reported the bug in September 2025, while other providers like Mullvad VPN and WireGuard had flagged similar behavior even earlier. The problem is also not limited to just a few services. VPN provider TunnelBear reports it’s also affected, and comments on Google’s Issue Tracker suggest that users have been encountering the bug as well.
“In Android 16, after updating a VPN app, the system may end up in a state where the VPN app is no longer able to reach the internet. In this erroneous state, the VPN app is blocked from accessing the internet in any way. This ends up being very confusing for the users as they can’t connect using the VPN and then are unable to reach the internet since it is stuck in a connecting state/fail to connect,” reads the complaint on Issue Tracker.
This usually happens when users receive updates to their VPN apps via Google Play while the VPN is active.
Proton and other VPN providers say restarting the VPN app doesn’t resolve the problem, leaving users stuck unless they reboot their device or reinstall the VPN entirely, steps many people are unlikely to try when there’s no clear error message.
What complicates things further is how inconsistent the bug seems to be. It reportedly occurs only a small percentage of the time, making it harder to pin down, but still frequent enough to impact real users across devices.
Despite the number of reports, Proton says Google has yet to properly acknowledge or address the issue. The latest response on the issue tracker is from September 2025. stating that the problem has been shared with the relevant teams and will be updated when more information becomes available.
For now, there’s no official fix or timeline from Google. Until that changes, users on Android 16 may want to keep a closer eye on how their VPN behaves, particularly after app updates.
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