Secure Your Apple Vision Pro with VPN: A Comprehensive Installation Guide and Advantages

David Gewirtz/ZDNET

One of the killer apps for Apple’s Vision Pro headset is using it while traveling, which also happens to be when you most want to use a VPN. I discussed this in a previous article -- before I had access to a Vision Pro – and did manage to dig around in the emulator and find a setting for VPNs, which boded well for eventual VPN capabilities.

Also: Itching to try Vision Pro’s Travel Mode? Here’s what to expect before you go

Now that I have a headset, I’m happy to report that, yes, installing a VPN on the Vision Pro does work. In this article, I’ll take you step by step through installing and configuring a VPN that runs entirely on the Vision Pro device.

Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links

If you click on a link and make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Before we begin

Two things are worth noting before we dig in.

First: The VPN service I’m using is Proton VPN, which I reviewed last year . This article is not a review of Proton VPN. It’s an exploration of what’s involved in setting up a VPN on the Vision Pro. Of the VPNs available to set up with Apple’s headset, Proton was the one with which I was most familiar. So I reached out to their team for a test account.

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Second: I need to acknowledge and explain the generally low quality of the screenshots. As I discussed in my article about how to take Vision Pro screenshots , the system only provides focused pixels on the small area your eyes are looking at and only takes 1920x1080 pixel images.

As such, many of the screenshots below are less than stellar. In instances where I wanted you to see a small section of a particular screenshot, I zoomed in tight in Photoshop and used that to illustrate the process.

Because the screenshot only captures a very small portion of the screen where eyes are focused, I had to take 72 images on the Vision Pro, including many shots of the same screen, in the hopes of getting one that was good enough. I wound up using 21. Each screenshot in this article has a little expando-square in the upper-right corner. You’ll probably want to hit that for most of these screenshots to be able to see the details.

Also: Apple Vision Pro tricks: How to take perfect screenshots and recordings (and avoid weirdness)

I do not care for the Vision Pro’s implementation of screenshots. If Apple wants us to tell you folks about how their new invention works, they really need to improve how this is done and let us grab full-frame, full-resolution screenshots.

With that observation out of the way, let’s get started.

Installing the apps

I’m going to install two apps: Proton’s VPN and Speed Test by Ookla . These are not native Vision Pro apps, but Apple allows developers to designate some of their iPad and iPhone apps as suitable for the Vision Pro.

Also: Why you’ll need a VPN for the Vision Pro (and other XR headsets)

When you open the App Store on the Vision Pro and do a search, you have the option of looking for VisionOS apps or iPad and iPhone apps. To get both of these apps, I told it to search the available iPad and iPhone apps.

The speed test is the easiest way to see and prove the VPN is in operation. So that’s what I installed first.

I launched the App Store on the Vision Pro itself and searched for “speed test”.

This says “Open” instead of “Get” because I had already installed it on the Vision Pro in the past, but wanted to show you how it looks in the App Store for this article.