Ugh, Private Relay has slowed down Safari significantly. I can't decide what's more important: speed or privacy. Decisions, decisions...

[puggsly]

Thanks for clarification!
I don't do geohopping, but I prefer having everything go through the VPN so looks like I'll be sticking with NordVPN for a while longer

If you are going through an App, that App can track anything you do regardless of the VPN so what's the concern?

 

[Scorch07]

Is Private Relay only working in Safari? Or does it work for all outbound traffic from your device?
If only for Safari, I fail to see the advantage of this (other than being free of course) over a regular VPN service?

Still pretty big advantages. For one, your ISP still can’t see anything you’re doing. But more importantly, advertisers and websites can’t profile you based on IP because it’s hidden and constantly changing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve googled something and my wife gets an ad for it on Instagram 5 minutes later because we’re on the same internet connection.

It’s still not a complete VPN by any means, you are correct, but it definitely still has benefits.

 

[sniffies]

Slowdowns still persist in beta 3. In fact, it's slightly worse than in beta 2.

 

[blueeyes2die4]

Slowdowns still persist in beta 3. In fact, it's slightly worse than in beta 2.

Something must be wrong. I have had issues from the first day I installed beta 1. Now on beta 3 private relay is working perfectly. No slowdowns whatsoever. I would try a network reset and see if that helps.

 

[synicalx1]

It's all still in beta so they'll be running it on the bare minimum footprint needed to test the feature and probably scaling it up over the course of the beta. I believe the only nodes running at the moment are in the US so if you're outside the US every single request is going to have very long round-trip-time which will in turn make everything feel slow.

 

[Weiser878]

I’d been noticing videos being incredibly slow to load from less than reputable streaming sites and if I tried to scrub forward they’d hang up indefinitely.
Turning off Private Relay fixed this.
As someone suggested earlier I do wish there was a setting to disable it only for certain apps or sites.

 

[Shirasaki]

I still keep private relay off cause the moment I turn it on, some apps and games I use often will not work.

 

[jclardy]

So beta 5 here, I forgot I had turned it on but was wondering why my wifi was so terrible. Turned off private relay and could finally load a webpage. Also tried logging in to AWS, it just doesn’t work because of the captcha.

 

[Ethrem]

So beta 5 here, I forgot I had turned it on but was wondering why my wifi was so terrible. Turned off private relay and could finally load a webpage. Also tried logging in to AWS, it just doesn’t work because of the captcha.

Yeah private relay sounded like a good idea but my VPN slows my connection down way less and works system-wide.

 

[jozeppy26]

So beta 5 here, I forgot I had turned it on but was wondering why my wifi was so terrible. Turned off private relay and could finally load a webpage. Also tried logging in to AWS, it just doesn’t work because of the captcha.

Same here. I just had to turn it off. Unbearably worse than the website loading delay experienced in beta 4.

 

[MichaelYYZ]

I am on a very stable and consistent VDSL2 50/10 Mbps connection but today, via Private Relay, I have been getting download speeds as low as 1.5 Mbps. The is so '2000s! If I turn Private Relay off, the download speed goes back to normal. The upload speed is not affected as much.

Is Apple's Private Relay down today, or does it have known issues?

Apple System Status page does not indicate currently any problems/outage for Private Relay.

I can see this statement on Apple's Private Relay page:

"While some speed test measurements may appear lower when Private Relay is enabled, your actual browsing experience remains fast and private."

This is not true today, everything loads up slowly and streaming on YouTube at quality higher than 480p is practically impossible when Private Relay is on.

 

[webbga]

Private Relay slowed my Internet to the point it was not useable. I had to disable it.