VPN Clients - TunnelBlick vs Viscosity 2017

[Mr_Indigo]

Hi, I know this question has been asked before (2009) 8 years ago how time flies, and I wondered if anyone has any feedback in 2017 re Tunnelblick and Viscosity.

I have used both and I prefer Viscosity, it seems more "Mac" while TunnelBlick feels more... "Windows" the irony is Tunnelblick is exclusively Mac and Viscosity is Bi-OS

I have found that connections are more stable in Viscosity with almost no dropouts. On Tunnelblick things were a little unpredictable.

So what are your thoughts, are there any up and coming VPN Star Apps on the horizon or are these the best for OpenVPN?

 

[KALLT]

I agree with your observation that Tunnelblick feels a bit… foreign. From the installation with a custom and frankly weird installer to the application itself, it all gives me an uneasy feeling. At best, it gives me the impression that the developer does not heed Apple’s best practices.

Viscosity is a decent application and it complies with Apple’s best practices from what I can see. It’s a bit of a shame that it is mostly Python under the bonnet though.

Shimo looks very promising too, but it is too expensive and feature-rich for my needs.

 

[Mr_Indigo]

I think the $9.00 for Viscosity is worth it, the slick GUI and stability are major pluses and the scripting side for P2P disconnection are also a plus. I also liked that it imported the Tunnelblick config files, something Tunnelblick doesn't seem to offer in Versa.

Why the shame of Python?

 

[hxlover904]

I agree with Tunnelblick being prone to disconnect at times. AirVPN has it's own special client and I like it better than both viscosity and TunnelBlick.

 

[steve62388]

I use Viscosity and like it although it's about jolly time Sparklabs included a kill switch. It's been 'coming soon' for a couple of years now and it's annoying you have to fudge one yourself.

 

[dyn]

the irony is Tunnelblick is exclusively Mac and Viscosity is Bi-OS

No the irony is that only Windows has an easy to use installer for the official OpenVPN client whereas any other operating system such as macOS needs to compile it from source. That's the reason why both Tunnelblick and Viscosity exist.

I have found that connections are more stable in Viscosity with almost no dropouts. On Tunnelblick things were a little unpredictable.

I used to have that too which is why I went with Viscosity. I have recently revisited Tunnelblick and it seems that currently Tunnelblick and Viscosity work equally well now and are very similar in features.

I also liked that it imported the Tunnelblick config files, something Tunnelblick doesn't seem to offer in Versa.

That is incorrect. Both Tunnelblick and Viscosity are able to export and import configs. The only difference is that Tunnelblick can only do the client independent .ovpn files (the official OpenVPN config file format) and Viscosity can do that plus its own file format. I did find some issues with Viscosity and importing .ovpn configs though. I needed to fiddle with the DNS settings whereas with Tunnelblick I didn't have to, it simply worked straight out of the box with Tunnelblick.

Since Tunnelblick and Viscosity are both good OpenVPN clients you can use them both. It is up to you to decide whether you want to spent a little bit of money (aka $9) on one.