VPN not working using Oneplus Parallel (cloned) Apps

jtbtroon

I've emailed PIA directly about this but they can't seem to resolve the issue, so I am wondering if anyone here has had this issue.

The Oneplus operating system (OxygenOS 5 or higher) has a feature which allows you to clone compatible apps and have two separate versions.

In my example I cloned the Twitter app, however it seems like the VPN doesn't work on the duplicated version.

I tested this by tweeting a link to the PIA website, then (with the VPN connected) I opened both of the links using the built-in browser. The original twitter said "protected by PIA" whereas the cloned version said "not protected" and quoted by IP etc...

Hoping someone else is having this issue and it's annoying me, lol.

Max-P

Depending on the way OnePlus implemented this feature, it's possible that the cloned application doesn't properly get some network settings applied to it and the VPN is unaffected. I imagine for this feature to be useful they don't actually install a perfect copy of the app but instead just runs two instances of it with a different data directory.

Android handles most of the VPN handling to keep full control over the network state, so the PIA app can't do much about this sadly.