I’ve got a Mac mini acting as an exit mode, running Home Assistant etc. I only need a Tailscale VPN when I want to use the Home Assistant app on my iPhone remotely, but it is really really annoying having to go into settings and turn the VPN on every time I just want to check what my lights are doing at home.
Is leaving my VPN on on my iPhone and using my Mac mini at the exit now 24/7 a problem? Is it quite taxing sending all of my data through the Mac mini when it is not really necessary for me to do so or is it not really a problem?
If you’re using an exit node it will drain your battery relatively quickly. However you should be able to access your HA instance without needing an exit node which works well and without any significant battery drain.
I really wish they would add ”connect on demand” like the WireGuard app has. I really only want my tunnel connected when away from my primary network. It’s kind of a trigger for me every time I have to manually connect and disconnect it . Otherwise really like Tailscale.
I leave mine on all the time, but only to utilize the pihole on my home network.
Fantastic I appreciate that. So as I understand when it’s not set as an exit node it therefore won’t be sending internet data through my Mac mini, unless it’s connecting directly to the Home Assistant instance?
To be honest I was more worried about taxing the Mac mini CPU and using more power unnecessarily than the battery on my phone. Cost of living crisis is pretty bad here in the UK lol
Exactly my primary use case from my phone. I turn the exit node on only if I wind up having to use a network not necessarily trust worthy or known to me.
Exactly - if not setup as an exit node then it will only communicate with it when you need access to that device only.
To be fair, Tailscale and general vpn routing take very little energy / cpu power to execute in any case!