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 mechanically choose the VPN server with the quickest obtain velocity and lowest latency. Mac customers are additionally getting an overhauled ExpressVPN app designed to work natively with MacOS.

In case you’ve used ExpressVPN earlier than, your first response most likely went one thing like “Wait, did not it have already got a Quickest Location button and a Mac app?” You are not fallacious, however there’s nonetheless a significant distinction with these new options. Previously, ExpressVPN did not technically choose the quickest location, however the Smart Location, which picks the most effective obtainable server utilizing “metrics corresponding to obtain velocity, latency, and distance” (emphasis mine). These are the identical metrics as the brand new characteristic, however the corresponding to makes me assume there are, or had been, different components 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 person. Solely testing can present whether or not they really modified the algorithm or simply the identify.

The brand new Mac app is a extra simple improve. Whereas ExpressVPN has at all times had a consumer for Mac, it is up to now 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 to be quite a bit richer, utilizing the display screen house quite a bit like Proton VPN does. And being extra like Proton VPN is rarely a bad thing.