How homeVPN works

Two phones of your own, paired once, connecting directly to each other.

Setting it up

1. Install homeVPN on the phone you will leave at home, and choose home mode. Leave it plugged into power and on your home Wi-Fi.
2. Install homeVPN on the phone you carry, and choose the mode for a device you take with you.
3. The phone at home shows a code. Scan it with the phone you carry. This is the only time the two need to be in the same room.
4. Choose a plan and start the free trial.
5. Tap connect. Your traffic now leaves through your home line.

What happens when you connect

Your two phones need to find each other before they can connect. We run a small signalling service that helps them exchange what they need, and nothing more. Once they have found each other, that service is out of the path and your traffic never touches it.

If the signalling service is ever unreachable, the phones can fall back to a public distributed lookup. That fallback shows your connection address to other participants in that public network, so the app explains it and lets you switch it off.

The phone at home looks after itself

The phone at home is unattended, so it has to recover on its own. It comes back after a power cut, before anyone unlocks it, and it keeps going across Wi-Fi changes and address changes from your provider.

From the phone you carry you can check its battery, its connection and how long it has been running, and restart it remotely if it needs it.

What it cannot do

• It does not work while the phone at home is switched off or offline.
• Your speed is limited by the upload speed of your home line.
• It does not offer always-on VPN.
• Some mobile networks block direct connections between devices. The app tells you when that is what happened.