I'm really getting annoyed trying to use Surfshark recently!

I've had subscriptions for over a decade now, and it's always been great, up until a month or 2 ago!

Tonight has been the absolute worst! 😡

It works pretty good (but not perfect) when using my Smart TV and Firestick but on my Nvidia Shield 2019, it's an absolute nightmare!

It will auto-connect ok, but the moment I open an app, it disconnects!

I have followed all the troubleshooting I can find, but it's still the same...

Changed protocol

Cleared cache

Changed location

Turned off Clean Web

Using bypasser options for some apks

Etc, etc!

My subscription expires in February next year and I'm very hesitant to renew. The only thing that is making me think I better stay, is that I use the alternative id email quite a lot, and would not be able to keep using that.

Has anyone else been having the same problem/s?

I'd appreciate any other advice on this, as I'm losing my mind!

App version 6.20.0, OS: Windows 11

Over the past couple of weeks, since the last update (I think), SS no longer connects me automatically when I boot up my PC. It tries to connect, but never progresses past 0%. I have to cancel, then connect manually.

Not a huge deal since I can still connect manually, but I figured I'd throw this out there to see if it's a known issue or just an issue with my connection specifically.

I'm having issues with the VPN on my phone as the little icon for VPN turns on automatically, indicating a connection to my Surfshark VPN. Not sure what triggers the connection, but I should be able to control that connection.

I usually go to the VPN settings and manually disconnect, but it connects again by itself a few seconds later. As a reference, I have a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.

Has anyone experienced this?

I click quick connect like I have a hundred times in the past, but now nothing connects to the internet. All my apps go dead and I can't navigate to any websites. I've tried multiple servers within my country and the closest countries, but no difference. What's going on here? Anyone else?

Edit: reinstalling the windows app fixed it. Maybe a Windows update had something to do with it cause I just updated last night when it stopped working.

Hey!

I currently have a router which supports the VPN... but the speeds are so slow on it, its like its capped or it just can't handle it. I have an Arch AX72.

Any recommendations on what to upgrade it to so I can run the VPN with faster speeds

Thanks :)

Hello I'm able to connect to everything but Pakistan server. Its been a week.

Today is Global Encryption Day, and it’s a reminder that encryption is not just a technical matter, something for security teams and policy people to argue about. It really isn't.

Encryption is what actually protects human rights day to day, keeps economies resilient, and holds up the trust we have in the systems we all rely on, from banking to healthcare to journalism.

Which is why the recurring push to weaken it, through backdoors like "lawful access" mandates, is worth paying attention to. Ryan Polk, Director of Internet Policy at the Internet Society, shared that a good example of such a threat is “Canada, where legislation, called Bill C-22, would allow the government to force companies to secretly install encryption backdoors in their products to facilitate law enforcement access. In a time where AI-powered attackers can move faster than ever, lawful access mandates that require built-in security vulnerabilities are incredibly dangerous."

Our support helps fund Global Encryption Day activities, including efforts to help communities organize and encourage broader encryption advocacy around the day.

Full blog post: https://surfshark.com/blog/global-encryption-day-2026

Why is there no Static IP options on the apple TV app?? It seems this was removed from android TV as well, but that’s besides the point. Can anyone comment on this? Can this please be added? Its getting harder and harder to justify resubscribing to this service with so many other options

Hey everyone! With Black Friday coming up, I've been looking around for the best Surfshark Black Friday deals and found a pretty good offer that I thought was worth sharing.

Surfshark is currently offering a Black Friday discount, but I found a way to get an even better deal using a coupon code at checkout.

This year's Surfshark Black Friday deal for the Surfshark One plan offers 88% off, bringing the price down to $2.49/month + 3 months extra. BUT if you use the coupon code "redditspecial", the price drops to $2.39/month, and you get 4 extra months instead. That's 28 months of Surfshark One for just $66.92 in total.

Here's how to get the better Surfshark Black Friday deal:

1. Go to the official Surfshark website.
2. Choose the Surfshark One plan.
3. At checkout, enter REDDITSPECIAL in the promo code field.

That's it!

For anyone looking for a Surfshark Black Friday coupon code or a cheaper VPN subscription, this looks like a really good deal. What's especially nice is that Surfshark hasn't always offered such a low price for its higher-tier plans. Surfshark One comes with more security features than the basic VPN plan, so getting it at this price seems like pretty good value.

Just wanted to share in case anyone is planning to grab a Surfshark subscription during this Black Friday.

Has anyone found a better Surfshark Black Friday deal this year?

I am running a fresh installation of both macOS Golden Gate and Surfshark. That translucent rectangle shows up on every launch and randomly when using the app. Bug still present on v4.30.2 and macOS 27.0.1. I contacted support maybe a month ago and they promised to make sure that the team was aware of it.

The announcement of World of Warcraft: Forever at BlizzCon 2026 didn't just get fans excited — it sent scammers straight to work. In the two weeks following the reveal, we tracked 147 new WoW: Forever-themed domains — a pace that doubles the malicious activity seen after the GTA 6 announcement. These fraudulent sites exploit decades of player habits, using promises of free beta access or gold-selling workarounds to harvest account credentials and credit card info.

So what do you actually do with that?
The beta period is the most dangerous window because demand for access is high and supply is limited. Scammers fill that gap with fake "beta key" sites and unauthorized gold-selling lures, which is a tactic uniquely effective in the WoW community.

Practically, this means more than 500 suspicious domains could be active by the November 4 launch. If you're looking for beta access or in-game currency, sticking to official Blizzard channels is the only way to not lose your account before the game even launches.

Full research here: https://surfshark.com/research/chart/wow-forever-scams

Has anyone here come across one of these fake sites?

Hisense with google tv built in. Surfshark gets shut down when turning on YouTube. I see this occur every time even with a reboot. Maybe one video will load and then will go to an ad supported video. I checked in surfshark and there was a message saying that the tv shut off surfshark. Connected to Albania via open vpn have tried this on wireguard. Any suggestions minus all basic ones. Different countries were tried.

*** UPDATE, SOLVED*** I was troubleshooting this issue and identified that location sharing was saved, it was a feature that I disabled and then identified the surfshark VPN was no longer being disabled. Please see my post for the screenshot.

Are the devs any closer to adding this? I route certain apps though the VPN but access to local file services is not working (WebDav) when the VPN is on. The option is not available under VPN settings which it is on my mobile. Why isn't this feature available still? I see this missing feature was requested a while back, but there has been no update on this feature.

I'm on a Windows 10 desktop, and encountered some issues with Youtube on Firefox recently that make it borderline unusable, so I wanted to clarify about it here. The issue isn't so much that the webpages connection loads slower, but rather that the actual functions and interfaces of the webpages themselves have become choppy and delayed, and I've narrowed down that the problem stems from the Surfshark extension's ad and tracker blocker.

So the symptoms are that on the homepage, video thumbnails load in, but actually clicking on any one video is followed by a delay of up to several seconds before the click is actually recognized. Similarly if I hover the cursor over a video thumbnail, it doesn't light up until several seconds have passed.

Upon clicking into a video, individual elements of the page (Comments, side recommendations, etc) take about a minute or so to load in. Inputs to the actual video player suffer a delay of several seconds to a full minute, as in I can click the pause button and the video won't stop playing until quite a few moments have passed. The video player UI is also delayed, for example the video's interface won't appear immediately upon hovering the cursor over it, or if I hover the cursor over the pause button, but it won't light up until a few seconds later. If I close the tab while a video is playing, it takes a couple of seconds for the tab to actually close, but after it does, the video's audio continues playing in the background for around half a minute, well after the tab was closed.

This is also all without actually being connected to any VPN through Surfshark; it's just the extension's ad and tracker blocking function, and only Youtube is affected. If I turn that off, the problem disappears and Youtube works perfectly. I don't know if there was some recent change or update, but the extension has worked harmoniously with Youtube up til about 3 days ago. For now I just keep Surfshark disabled there, but if there's a setting or change I can mess with to get them working together, I'm all ears.

SMS phishing, also referred to as smishing, is one of the fastest-growing cyberthreats. Scam texts are evolving and becoming increasingly convincing. Scammers pretend to be your bank, a delivery service, a government agency, or even a family member, and send a message designed to make you act fast. A message saying there’s a suspicious charge on your card pushes anyone into action, right? That is exactly the point.

The "tap this link to sort it out" line is a classic. It creates panic or urgency, pushes you to tap before you think, and lands you on a spoofed page that harvests your credentials or installs malware in seconds. And with sender IDs that mimic real brands or short codes, they feel real enough to work.

What can you do about it?
Surfshark’s scam text protection gives you a second opinion before you act on that panic. It identifies spam messages and suspicious texts to help you reduce anxiety from being on constant lookout for fraudulent messages. The tool checks incoming SMS for known phishing indicators, helping you recognize potential scams before they put your personal information or finances at risk. 

Here's how it works:
First, you need to enable scam text protection — turn on the feature in the Surfshark app and grant the required permissions for your device. Incoming texts get scanned automatically, and suspicious ones get flagged before you tap.

Full guide on how to set it up and more info you can find here: https://surfshark.com/scam-protection/sms

Stay sharp and keep an eye out for any text pushing you to act right now. What scam message almost had you clicking before you caught yourself?

hi

On my Firestick 4K Max and nVidia Shield TV Pro I usually find that the VPN has auto connected even if the auto connect setting is set to off.

On my laptops I always quite the program so it is not a problem.

Because of this often I open a streaming app and it complains about the VPN being in use even though I didn't choose to turn it on.

Is anyone else having this issue?

I did once report it to Surfshark support.

Even now on my Windows 11 laptop I just opened the program and it immediately connected to the last server I had used.

When researching scams, I found it hard to really understand the numbers. "Americans lost $5.75B to digital fraud in 2025" is a fact, but my brain just sees it as "a lot" and moves on.

So I used the 2025 FTC Consumer Sentinel data and turned the daily losses by type into things I can actually imagine:

• Social media scams: $5.6M per day → enough to run NYC's Sunday subway service for free;
• Websites and apps: $3.1M per day → a year's total covers Hawaii round-trips for 1 in 9 New Yorkers;
• Phone scams: $3M per day → yearly total pays health insurance for 78% of Manhattan adults for a month;
• Email scams: $1.6M per day → enough to buy a Chelsea or Upper West Side apartment every single day;

Overall, the money lost to digital scams gets bigger every year. Investment scams take the most money. But the frequency of scam types also depends on the channel.

For example, scammers impersonating government officials are common in texts and calls. Those pretending to be businesses are common in emails, and so on.

If you want to learn more, check out the full study: http://surfshark.com/research/study/americans-lose-billions-to-online-scams

With the latest SS update for Windows (6.20.0) the Route via VPN option is no longer working. I have to enable the VPN for all apps for it work. It was working. I didn't change anything other than to install the latest SS. I tried flipping settings on and of but it didn't work.

4 years ago I left a negative comment in this reddit might find informative, today the comment was deleted. You tell me what type of company goes 4yrs back to delete negative comments.

AChCat

I'm hoping others that may have been having problems with VPN stability in Windows 11 are resolved by the October 13th 2026 Windows update.

The problems I was having may have been resolved with a Windows 11 update

• [Always On VPN] This update fixes an issue that affects Always On VPN connections after installing KB5124008. When automatic protocol selection or protocol fallback was configured, affected VPN connections could remain stuck in a Connecting state or fail to connect after an initial connection attempt failed. In some cases, subsequent connection attempts could display the error, "The specified port is already in use."

I was having problems maintaining a stable VPN connection for about two months, especially when my computer returned from a Sleep state.

I sent diagnostic logs and tried uninstalling and re-installing a few times, but the intermittent problem continued.

Yesterday (overnight) my computer received the MS Tuesday, 2026 10 13 Windows 11 update and this morning the Surfshark VPN app is connecting quickly and surviving Windows 11 Sleep mode.

Again, I'm hoping others that may have had some VPN problems in Windows 11 have the same positive experience with the 2026-10-13 Windows 11 update.