Request: IP and hostname exclusion in split tunneling

[CyanCX2]

One of the biggest missing features in the Android client is the lack of support for IP/Hostname split tunneling. Since Windscribe is used in many countries with restrictive and censored internet that also happen to block many internal services to foreign IPs, it's much more convenient to exclude certain domains instead of having to turn the VPN on and off just to visit a website.

[Roithnac]

One of the biggest missing features in the Android client is the lack of support for IP/Hostname split tunneling. Since Windscribe is used in many countries with restrictive and censored internet that also happen to block many internal services to foreign IPs, it's much more convenient to exclude certain domains instead of having to turn the VPN on and off just to visit a website.

[Ginder-Singh]

This features is now added to future plans.

[Saeed-Khamseh]

This features is now added to future plans.

Any update on this?

[Ginder-Singh]

We did circle over this and there no clear solution for it.
Android sdk did added a another function to exclude a route(Ip or Ip range) from vpn interface which could work as way to exclude some traffic. It not a full solution But we may add this future release under advance parameters.

[Saeed-Khamseh]

We did circle over this and there no clear solution for it. Android sdk did added a another function to exclude a route(Ip or Ip range) from vpn interface which could work as way to exclude some traffic. It not a full solution But we may add this future release under advance parameters.
Hello,

I’ve been a long-time Windscribe user (living in Iran) and here, the internet situation generally forces us to keep VPN on for most external services while needing to retain an Iranian IP to access local services (banks, government, etc.). On desktop, the feature allowing IP-based routing works perfectly for this scenario. Unfortunately, the Android app currently lacks this. While app-based split tunneling exists, it’s less optimal for cases like ours.

Since I’m a developer myself (though not an Android specialist), I got curious to see if I could add this feature. After studying the source, I managed to extend the functionality to all protocols; OpenVPN, WireGuard, and IKEv2 and created a new UI screen to manage custom IP addresses, following the style of the Windows version as closely as possible. Currently, the feature appears to work, though I occasionally need to set a custom DNS in some scenarios, and there may still be bugs.

The main challenge I’m facing is performance degradation when the feature is enabled. For example, with WireGuard:
Without the feature: ~2 seconds to connect
With the feature (using ~1800 Iranian IP ranges): up to 10 seconds to connect.

The root cause seems to be that after IP range expansion, I end up with ~8000 entries, and for each we have a call to addRoute. Naturally, this leads to noticeable performance loss.

I’ve considered alternatives:

1. Using excludeRoute: recently added in newer Android versions. This could potentially reduce the routing overhead, but it comes with Android version limitations. Supporting both “inclusive” and “exclusive” modes adds complexity and may require dynamically switching between addRoute and excludeRoute to minimize exception counts.
2. Low-level packet inspection: processing packets directly to decide whether to forward them through the tunnel. However, this seems significantly more complex and not straightforward to implement efficiently.

I’d like to know your thoughts:

• Is there a known efficient approach for handling such a large IP exclusion list in Android VPN implementations?
• Could a more compact route definition method be used without sacrificing accuracy?
• Do you think excludeRoute is worth implementing alongside addRoute for version compatibility?

I am happy to collaborate and contribute any way I can to make such a feature possible in the official app. Meanwhile, you can see my experimental changes in the following link.

Thanks for your time and for building such a great product.