I’ve been a PIA user for a while but I’ve reached my limit with this ongoing issue that’s never been fixed. Quite often, opening the app from the menu bar just results in endless spinning. The only way to get things working again is to reboot the computer or restart the daemon from the command line. While this seems to temporarily fix the issue, it begs the question - why should I need to launch a command every time I want my VPN to work as it should?
I’ve seen various complaints about this exact issue and there was even a post a few months ago saying it was finally fixed. Well, I’m on the latest version and it’s still happening.
At this point I’ve given up. I’m not interested in working around the issue anymore. After so many complaints, this should have been resolved by now. If they can’t fix it after all this time, it’s just not worth it.
Unfortunately my renewal isn’t coming up soon so I’m stuck for now but needless to say, I won’t be renewing when the time comes.
Just wanted to vent my frustration here since it seems like I’m not alone in dealing with this.
Edit (2024-09-05):
Today I turned on my computer and encountered the exact same issue again. I’ve never noticed this happening immediately after startup before, so at this point, I lost track of when and under which specific circumstances it happens.
Well, for one thing maybe share your hardware setup. Also add which OS version you are running on that hardware and what version of PIA, that is helpful to help diagnose the issue.
Right now all you’ve said is “it’s broken, fix it.”
Because there is no any update since April, so basically every issue that appear after April still remain unfixed. I’m thinking about using the 30 days money back guarantee to get back my money.
I’ve contacted PIA support multiple times about this issue, starting back in March 2023. This has been going on for over a year now and yet no real solution has been offered.
As a developer myself I find it frustrating when devs/companies deflect blame onto the OS without identifying the real problem. If Apple were truly the issue, we’d see the same problems with other VPN clients on macOS but that’s not the case. I’ve tried multiple VPN providers on this exact same machine and they’ve all worked perfectly.
In fact, on different occasions I had to borrow accounts from friends using different services (I want to clarify that I’m not naming them because I don’t want this to come across as if I’m advertising for another company) because I also had instances where IP addresses from a specific country weren’t recognized as being from that country. When I tried other services to see if the problem persisted, everything worked flawlessly. No client problems, no incorrect IP locations, nothing.
Interestingly, the changelog for v3.5.7 released six months ago mentioned this issue as being “fixed”. If the problem were really with Apple, how could PIA have claimed to fix it in the first place? This alone shows it’s not “caused by Apple”. Not that the issue is actually fixed for me. Six months later, I’m still facing it. Maybe I’m dealing with a different but similar problem or maybe it’s the same one that wasn’t resolved properly. Honestly, I don’t even care anymore.
It’s frustrating to keep hearing the same generic responses from support/developers rather than seeing any genuine effort to resolve the issue after more than a year. I have little to no confidence left in PIA’s software or their support team.
Thank you for the suggestion. The client does work initially when I first turn on my computer so it doesn’t seem like an issue with permissions or settings in system preferences. The problem occurs specifically after waking the computer from sleep. At that point, the daemon stops working and the client gets stuck in a perpetual loading state until I restart the daemon from command line or reboot the system.
I’m not sure if you actually read my post but it seems like you have missed the main point of it.
I’m not asking for help, suggestions or recommendations. As I mentioned in my post & comments, I’ve given up on trying to fix this issue and I’m no longer interested in troubleshooting it.
If you are wondering why I chose the “Help - macOS” flair, it was because there wasn’t an option like “I’m tired of this and just want to vent.” So, I went with the only option mentioning macOS.
If you search this subreddit, you’ll find multiple posts mentioning this exact or similar issue going back quite a while. Clearly, this isn’t a problem unique to my setup. Heck, even in this thread you can see that someone else is complaining about the same thing.
Given this, if you still believe that sharing my hardware details or software setup would help solve the problem, good for you for staying optimistic, but I’ve lost all expectations from PIA as I made clear in my post.
So although you are wrong and somehow managed to misinterpret a post that was clearly meant to share frustration as a request for a fix without providing information, it still wouldn’t have been unreasonable if I did. This isn’t GitHub issues for an open source project and we are not helping the developer debug problems. It’s a subreddit for a commercial product that people pay to use and expecting a fix for a problem that has clearly been ongoing for a long time is entirely reasonable.
Mine is fully working but I’ll try replicate that, I also try to limit sleep when heavy or important network activity. Would you try reinstalling your system? Jumping to the newest OSn and client? How about inaudible wireguard or open vpn and manually entering in those creds?
Thank you for your suggestions! I appreciate your willingness to help.
I’m familiar with alternative setups like using OpenVPN or WireGuard manually and I’m quite comfortable with the technical side of things. I’ve already set up OpenVPN credentials on my router, configuring traffic rules to route through different VPN servers to bypass specific geo-blocked content.
However when I just need to quickly connect to a specific country, I want to be able to simply open the client on my computer and have it work seamlessly. So my main point is that I’ve paid for a service and I expect their client to function properly without having to resort to DIY solutions.
To me, this isn’t about finding another workaround to make their service work but it’s about holding the company accountable to provide a product that works as advertised.
Hmn I see. Also you are very professional. Thank you for your kind words. You are very technical, perhaps try it again and see what’s going on? I am feeling survivor guilt for it working so far.