What Teal Free gives a MacBook Pro
Teal Free is the plan with no payment details. You get 500 MB of data a day, shared by your devices, the Lithuania location, and up to 2 devices on one account. You sign in with Google or with a code sent to your email. There is no Apple sign-in in the direct Mac build.
The Mac app is native and lives in the menu bar. The .dmg from tealvpn.com/mac is signed and notarised through Apple's Developer ID process, and the app updates itself. It is not on the Mac App Store yet.
On a work trip this is what changes: on café, hotel, airport or mall Wi-Fi, the network sees an encrypted connection to a Teal VPN server, not the sites you open; websites see a Teal VPN server's address instead of yours.
A working day in 500 MB
500 MB a day is enough for a working day of email, chat, web apps, documents and web pages. It is not enough for a day of video calls. A call sends and receives video the whole time, and a few long calls can spend the day's 500 MB before lunch.
The counter is in the app as Data today. On Teal Free it resets every day. A spent 500 MB is not a blocked network; the Wi-Fi still works, and the VPN carries data again after the reset. Check Data today before you assume a blocked network.
Two ways to handle calls: leave the calls app outside the VPN (see below), or move to Teal Pro, which has unlimited data.
| What you do all day | Fits in 500 MB a day? | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Email, chat, documents, web apps | Yes | Stay on Teal Free |
| Web pages with many images | Usually | Glance at Data today after lunch |
| A few short video calls | Sometimes | Put the calls app under Apps outside the VPN |
| A day of calls, big downloads, video | No | Teal Pro: unlimited data, 7 days free on monthly and yearly |
The three-minute setup
You need macOS 13.3 Ventura or later. On an Apple silicon MacBook Pro (M1, M2, M3, M4) the steps below are all there is.
After that, one click connects, and Teal VPN appears under System Settings › VPN. The menu bar icon is enough for the rest of the day.
Download
Get the .dmg from tealvpn.com/mac.
Install from Applications
Drag Teal VPN to Applications. Eject the disk image and open the app from Applications, not from the image. An app started from the .dmg cannot keep its VPN configuration.
Sign in
Google, or a sign-in code sent to your email. No card for Teal Free (500 MB a day).
Connect and allow
Press Connect. Allow Teal VPN, then allow the VPN configuration with Touch ID or your password.
Find the switch if macOS asks
macOS 13 and 14: System Settings › Privacy & Security › Allow. macOS 15 and later: System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions › Network Extensions. Until this is allowed, Connect never finishes.
A laptop that sleeps and wakes on new networks
A MacBook Pro on a work trip closes its lid in the hotel, opens it on a phone hotspot, and opens it again on the office Wi-Fi. Each wake is a new network. Two switches on the Protection page handle this.
Connect on demand keeps the tunnel up on every network. When the Mac wakes and joins new Wi-Fi, Teal VPN brings the tunnel back without a click. Auto-connect at login does the same after a restart. Turn both on once.
The kill switch stops the internet if the VPN drops. Your work account then waits until the tunnel is back instead of going out over the bare Wi-Fi. If one route fails, Teal VPN switches to another by itself.
One thing the switches cannot do: hotel, airport and café Wi-Fi often needs its sign-in page finished in a browser first. Finish that page, then let Teal VPN connect. If the Wi-Fi still will not carry the VPN, compare it with a phone hotspot: if the hotspot works, the Wi-Fi filters VPN traffic, and Teal VPN tries another route by itself.
Apps outside the VPN for a tool that must stay local
Some office tools only work on the office network. Teal VPN has a setting for this: Apps outside the VPN. Apps on that list skip the VPN and use the network directly. Everything else stays inside the tunnel.
Add the office tool to the list in the app. The same list is the answer for video calls on Teal Free: add the calls app, and its traffic no longer goes through Teal VPN, so it does not spend the 500 MB a day. An app on the list talks to the network as if Teal VPN were off, so use it only for the tools that need it.
If your company gives you its own VPN app: only one VPN app can carry traffic. Quit the other app fully, from its menu bar icon too. Teal VPN warns when another VPN is active and shows Not protected.
Intel-era MacBook Pro or Apple silicon
If your MacBook Pro has an M1, M2, M3 or M4 chip, it is Apple silicon. That is the supported case: the app runs natively and the setup above is complete.
Intel MacBook Pros: the download is a universal app, so it also contains an Intel build. Support for Intel Macs is in testing. It may run well on your machine, but we do not promise it yet.
One more rule. On a Mac without Apple's security chip (some older Intel Macs), Teal Free also needs Teal VPN on your Android phone. Pro doesn't. So on an older Intel MacBook Pro, Teal Pro is the simpler path; on Apple silicon, Teal Free (500 MB a day) works on the Mac alone.
When Teal Pro is the right move
Teal Pro gives unlimited data, every Teal VPN location in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, and up to 3 devices; the list is on tealvpn.com/locations. Move to Teal Pro when your days are mostly video calls, when you want a location other than Lithuania (Fastest location measures your ping and puts the fastest at the top), or when you want three devices on one account.
Monthly and yearly plans start with 7 days free. You add a card on account.tealvpn.com, one free week per account, and you pay nothing if you cancel before day 7. The 6-month plan and crypto have no free week. Prices depend on your country; in the US it is $7.99 a month, $24 for 6 months and $36 a year.
A sensible order: a week on Teal Free (500 MB a day) with an eye on Data today. If call days hit the limit, start the 7 days of Teal Pro before the next trip.
Privacy, and what a VPN does not do
We do not log the websites you visit, your DNS lookups or the contents of your traffic, and we do not store the IP address you connect from. The full list is on the page What we keep and what we don't.
A VPN does not make you anonymous: accounts you sign into still know it's you. It does not make a fake sign-in page safe, remove malware, or fix a network with no internet.
Teal VPN is made by Fxolio LLC, a company registered in Wyoming, USA. If something does not work, write to [email protected] with your macOS version, Teal VPN version, the location chosen, the exact message and whether a phone hotspot works. Never send passwords, codes or keys.
Keep reading
References
- Teal VPN for Mac
- What we keep and what we don't
- Teal VPN locations
- Apple Support: Set up a VPN connection on Mac
- Apple Support: Change Login Items & Extensions settings on Mac
Need help with Teal? Contact support.