I am smitten with Tailscale. It sets up mesh VPN between devices. It is extremely helpful, as I am traveling this holiday season.

I heard about it on the self-hosted podcast.

A practical application is setting up a pi hole for DNS resolution for ad blocking on the go. Also, you can access all your services outside of your local network.

However, the Android app was terrible.

After a couple of hours using it, my phone battery would be drained and the phone would be hot.

Additionally, the UI was useless.

The team updated the Android app in May of 2024.

It is now phenomenal.

Battery usage is minimal and my phone no longer gets hot. But beyond those essential improvements, I can see all the devices on my network, their magic DNS, IPv4 and IPv6. And easily open an exit node, though I have yet to figure out the application of those quite yet.

So kudos to the team. The rework is amazing. It’s faster, more stable, and more useful.