ExpressVPN provides a Quickest Location button and launches a brand new native Mac app

ExpressVPN, one of many best VPNs, is launching two brand-new features that sound confusingly like issues it already does. Customers on Android, Mac and iOS (however apparently not Home windows, Linux or sensible TVs) can now use Quickest Location to routinely choose the VPN server with the quickest obtain pace and lowest latency. Mac customers are additionally getting an overhauled ExpressVPN app designed to work natively with MacOS.

If you happen to’ve used ExpressVPN earlier than, your first response in all probability went one thing like “Wait, did not it have already got a Quickest Location button and a Mac app?” You are not improper, however there’s nonetheless a significant distinction with these new options. Up to now, ExpressVPN did not technically choose the quickest location, however the Smart Location, which picks one of the best obtainable server utilizing “metrics akin to obtain pace, latency, and distance” (emphasis mine). These are the identical metrics as the brand new characteristic, however the akin to makes me assume there are, or have been, different substances within the “sensible location” algorithm.

My guess is that ExpressVPN is rebranding “sensible” to “quickest” in response to buyer complaints that “sensible” was choosing sub-optimal server places. That is not a habits I observed after I last reviewed ExpressVPN — the sensible location was at all times a lot quick for me — however I am only one consumer. Solely testing can present whether or not they really modified the algorithm or simply the title.

The brand new Mac app is a extra easy improve. Whereas ExpressVPN has at all times had a shopper for Mac, it is to date been a port of an app initially developed for iPad. This makes its otherwise-excellent interface really feel a bit like, properly, a cellphone app you utilize in your desktop. In distinction, the brand new app was constructed utilizing Project Catalyst, which lets Mac builders flip their iOS apps into desktop-native software program. The brand new interface seems lots richer, utilizing the display house lots like Proton VPN does. And being extra like Proton VPN is rarely a bad thing.