A travel VPN for hotel Wi-Fi

At 11:20 p.m. after the flight the hotel Wi-Fi joins. Mail loads on the bed, and it dies by the elevator.

Why this happens

A hotel network is one pipe for a building full of people who all got in around the same hour. On a business trip you meet that pipe in the lounge as often as in the room. The captive page can already be done. You are on the network. The failure after that is not the login form. It is a shared line with no room left, and a session that drops when your phone moves from one access point to the next. The hallway is enough distance for that handoff to fail.

Airport Wi-Fi is the same walk with more strangers on the network. Your mail and a chart sit on a link you do not run, next to everyone else at the gate. Pages stall, calls drop, and a tunnel that dies between two networks waits if something has to be started by hand. Campus networks do this too. Different building, same shape.

Reconnect is the part you feel in your pocket. You should not be importing a profile between the room and the lift. A detour that sends every request the long way makes the stall look like the hotel is simply slow, when part of the delay is the extra lap and part is the crowd. Knowing which of those you are looking at is the practical question. The latest annoyance is the laptop left connected all night on the desk. An idle machine that keeps a tunnel up can still be asked to move packets, and the battery answers for it in the morning.

What Kovalink does

After the hotel Wi-Fi has accepted you, one tap is the connection.
Global mode, under Settings then Routing, puts every destination through the tunnel when you do not want mainland sites to stay direct.
One tap connects Kovalink, and one tap disconnects it.
Auto selects a server, or you pick one from the Nodes list.
Smart routing stays on by default: sites in mainland China go direct, and traffic to other places goes through the tunnel.
Under Settings, then Routing, you can switch that mode to Global.
If the path in use fails, Kovalink falls back to another on its own, and you do not choose a protocol.
On iPhone, Live Activity on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, plus a Home Screen widget, shows whether you are connected.
On Mac, the same state sits in the menu bar.
The latest version sharply reduces network wakeups while the device is idle, which uses less power.
On Mac, Disconnect when idle is off by default.
With that switch on, locking the screen or display sleep disconnects, and unlocking connects again.

Start in three steps

Download Kovalink for iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
Sign in with an email code, Sign in with Apple, Google, or Whop. One email is one account, and access follows that account across devices.
Tap once to connect. Auto selects a server. You can choose another from the Nodes list.

Questions

How much does Kovalink cost?

US$29 / month, or US$199 / year. You subscribe in the app with Apple. The price on Whop is the same.

How many devices does one subscription cover?

One subscription covers up to 3 devices. Kovalink runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS 17 or later, and on Mac with macOS 14 or later.

What if I am not satisfied?

Apple subscriptions are managed by your Apple ID. Cancel anytime.

Download Kovalink before you leave the room, and connect with one tap in the hall.