Show HN: VPNBypass – macOS menu bar app to route domains around your VPN

  • Posted 11 hours ago by geiser
  • 1 points
Hey HN,

I built/vibe-coded VPNBypass because I was tired of manually managing routes every time I connected to my VPN. Some services (streaming, banking, local network) need to bypass the VPN—but especially, and the trigger for this whole project: my VPN was blocking my own site, lynxprompt.com. Doing this manually with route add commands is tedious. Some VPNs implement this and call it split-tunneling, but not mine.

VPNBypass sits in your menu bar and automatically detects your VPN connection and gateway, resolves domains to IPs and adds the appropriate routes, refreshes DNS periodically (since IPs change), and updates /etc/hosts for proper DNS resolution. It comes with 50+ pre-configured services (YouTube, Telegram, etc.) and you can add custom domains.

On the technical side: it's built with Swift/SwiftUI as a native macOS app (13+). It uses a privileged helper via SMAppService to avoid repeated sudo prompts. It also detects Tailscale exit nodes automatically, monitors network changes, auto-applies routes on startup and VPN connection, verifies routes... etc.

Would love feedback—especially on services I should add to the default list, edge cases with different VPN setups (OpenVPN, WireGuard, corporate VPNs), or any issues you encounter. I've only tested it with GlobalProtect, so please report if you see any problems with other providers.

GitHub: https://github.com/GeiserX/VPNBypass

License: GPL-3.0

Thank you!

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