[HN Gopher] Apple TV, now with more Tailscale
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Apple TV, now with more Tailscale
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 276 points
Date : 2023-09-18 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tailscale.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tailscale.com)
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I don't care either way, but I did note the ignorance of the
| elephant in the room as to why 99% of people would care about
| Tailscale and native VPN support on their Apple TV... and it's
| not "avoiding sketchy wifi networks".
| fotta wrote:
| > With a Tailscale exit node, you're in control and you get the
| internet connection you're used to. This new feature could come
| in handy if you're traveling with your Apple TV and want to
| access the same geo-restricted channels you can see from home.
|
| They do call this out towards the end.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| How's this supposed to work? If I'm travelling with my Apple
| TV and use it as an exit node, it's as geo-restricted as I
| am, wherever I am.
| ezfe wrote:
| This blog post isn't just for using it as an exit node.
| Traveling with the Apple TV and using Tailscale lets you
| exit-node back to your house.
|
| Traveling without the Apple TV and the exit-node can be
| your Apple TV.
| Larrikin wrote:
| You designated a device at home as the exit node and are
| using that on your Apple TV in a different location.
| copperx wrote:
| For sharing Netflix accounts?
| fragmede wrote:
| Arrr, it not be for Netflix.
| tredre3 wrote:
| Tailscale isn't useful for piracy. Unless you really want
| your pirate traffic to always be routed through your home?
| ezfe wrote:
| Tailscale has Mullvad integration now, so it can be used
| that way too
| tshaddox wrote:
| The idea is that you host all your pirated media from
| home, e.g. on a NAS running Plex or Jellyfin, and your
| home server can stream any of your media to any device
| (including transcoding it to best fit the device and
| connection).
|
| Tailscale isn't particularly useful for acquiring the
| pirated media in the first place, of course.
| cellu wrote:
| I guess it's more to be able to access the local are
| stack / jellyfin from everywhere?
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| Because say I want to connect to my own private remote network.
| I have a server hosted in a datacenter because I self-host. I'd
| much rather have VPN capabilities than deal with a proxy server
| and publicly open ports with rules. This is a much tighter way
| to do things, IMHO.
| LoganDark wrote:
| It's a way to access it remotely without having to forward a
| port to the whole world. There are other ways to do this, but a
| VPN is usually the most straightforward option.
|
| It's also a way to proxy your connections through a device at
| home, of course. Whether the Apple TV is the client or the exit
| node.
| meowtimemania wrote:
| The main use case I see is sharing streaming services like
| youtube TV with family.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| You can already do that officially... but maybe not region-
| locked sports
| sangnoir wrote:
| It's cheaper if everyone is in the "same household" (i.e.
| sharing the same public IP as main account)
| drewnick wrote:
| Definitely not region locked sports. My YT TV account is
| based on the other side of the country and I can't watch
| our local teams quite frequently. I've been using wireguard
| and a dedicated wifi network to tunnel through a fiber
| connection "back home" and it then thinks I am local and
| all works well. This is much cleaner with tailscale!
| zikduruqe wrote:
| I run my own DNS server at home, and have Tailscale installed
| on it also. I use this so when I am away from home, I can
| continue to use it via Tailscale and/or an exit node for full
| on VPN-like solution.
|
| I can now, move Tailscale off that server, and put it on my
| Apple TV to use as my network for my DNS server when I am
| away from the house.
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| This is great news! Not only does this make a remote Plex /
| Jellyfin media server easier to deal with, the Apple TV can be an
| exit node. Solid work, TailScale!
| maxmcd wrote:
| I'm a little unfamiliar with how Plex routing works. Would this
| make it so that your plex connected media servers don't need to
| be publicly routabel and the Plex app will know to connect
| through the tailscale network?
|
| Would you need to reconfigure plex to use the tailscale ip
| addresses and then the Apple TX Plex app will stream over that
| address?
| aaomidi wrote:
| Depends on how you've setup Plex, but you can give it custom
| access URLs. So you can expose both a public and a private
| endpoint. Or just a private endpoint, up to you really.
| ecliptik wrote:
| I wrote up a guide [1] on using Plex + Tailscale + HTTPS last
| year to setup Plex so you don't have to expose it through the
| Plex relays or setup port forwards for other devices on a
| Tailnet.
|
| I would assume with this announcement, you can keep Plex
| private to your Tailnet and an AppleTV also on the Tailnet
| could use it without any port fowarding.
|
| 1. https://forums.plex.tv/t/remote-access-using-tailscale-
| magic...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >setup port forwards for other devices on a Tailnet.
|
| Ah. Now I get it.
| Operyl wrote:
| Using it as an always-on exit node is actually a pretty nifty
| feature, I hadn't thought about that as a viable feature before
| now.
| cube2222 wrote:
| This is by the way kind of how remote access with apple home
| works.
|
| The Apple TV serves as a local gateway relaying all the
| commands to your local IoT devices.
|
| On a side note, tailscale is lovely. I have nothing but good
| things to say about them.
| Operyl wrote:
| Yup, either a HomePod, Apple TV, or iPad left at home can act
| as a HomeKit hub.
| ericswpark wrote:
| Just an FYI, but iPads can no longer be used as a HomeKit
| hub as of last year: https://support.apple.com/en-
| us/HT213481
|
| (Yes, you can _technically_ use an iPad as a hub if you are
| on the old Home architecture)
| Operyl wrote:
| Good change, then! It wasn't a great experience for most
| people. iPads are rarely static home fixtures now, and
| they were the only ones capable of dying.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Finally, the new Tailscale client allows an Apple TV to be an
| exit node itself for other machines in your tailnet.
|
| Pretty huge. Many non-techy users don't like the idea of keeping
| a computer on 24/7, but a smart TV is just fine.
|
| Also, the Apple TV 4k only draws 0.5 watts at idle and less than
| 3 watts when streaming movies[0], so I imagine it pulls less than
| 1 just tunnelling traffic. Computers pull 15W+ at idle, and
| that's with low end components.
|
| 0:
| https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/appletv/Apple...
| jondwillis wrote:
| Neat, maybe I can sell my M1 mini server
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Many non-techy users
|
| Why would a non-techy user want to volunteer to be an exit
| node?
| notatoad wrote:
| tailnets are private. you're not "volunteering" to be an exit
| node for other people like a tor exit node, you're just
| routing your own traffic through your home internet
| connection.
|
| if you travel and you want your traffic to always appear like
| it's coming from your home network, being able to send it
| through your appletv is cool.
| fragmede wrote:
| [delayed]
| aaomidi wrote:
| I had not convinced the use case of using this as an exit node.
| Fuck this simplified so much.
| copperx wrote:
| Tailscale also runs on Android TV. If you don't have an Apple
| TV and want a cheap device just to have an exit node, you can
| buy a $20 Android TV thingy.
| mjs wrote:
| It ... kind of does, but if you filter the reviews by "TV"
| you'll see there's quite a few issues with it: https://play
| .google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tailscale..... Not
| sure why the back button issue hasn't been fixed, that
| makes it very inconvenient to set up. (Also: are you sure
| it can be used as an exit node? That wasn't supported a few
| months ago.)
| vosper wrote:
| Beware that a lot of cheap Android TV boxes come pre-loaded
| with heaps of malware. You don't want them in your network.
|
| Linus Tech Tips has a video about it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vpepaQ-VQQ&themeRefresh=1
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| So far I've used it to get vpn on apple tv and i dont think i
| am going to change, also considering how apple leaks vpns like
| there's no tomorrow https://www.amazon.nl/GL-iNet-GL-
| MT300N-V2-Reiserouter-Repea...
| close04 wrote:
| Can second the recommendation for the Mango travel router. I
| always prefer to take the VPN out of the "hands" of the
| client device to avoid any leaks. With 2 such devices
| connected via Wireguard VPN any other device I connect to
| that client router's WiFi is safely communicating through
| that VPN. A sort of site to site VPN that works for devices
| that could never otherwise use a VPN client.
|
| But of course this is a different use case and not always an
| option. Not if you want to use Tailscale. Probably unless
| that Apple TV is already connected to one of this "VPN WiFi"
| with Tailscale on top (no idea what the functionality or
| performance impact is).
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Can you use this to appear to be in another place for blackout
| avoidance purposes?
| sohrob wrote:
| Awesome news and boosts the utility of the Apple TV tremendously.
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| I wish they would work on their Android client.
|
| Its got a long standing request to add split tunnelling [0] (a
| standard feature on pretty much every VPN client you'll come
| across). But it seems in the spirit of re-inventing existing
| networking technologies, Tailscale also decided to re-invent what
| a VPN client does.
|
| This alone makes me give this otherwise wonderful project a pass
| despite all the deservingly good press it gets.
|
| [0] https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/6912
| dimgl wrote:
| Tailscale continues to be one of the more impressive services
| I've ever used. Going to install this on my Apple TV immediately.
| I often travel and use public Wi-Fi, so this is massively useful
| as my PC and my laptop are not always on (so I can't use them as
| an exit node). Pretty genius honestly.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Is it possible to run a plex or jellyfin server on an Apple TV
| like a Nvidia Shield? If so, I might seriously consider getting
| an Apple TV just to run as a media server.
| billyhoffman wrote:
| Sadly an Apple TV can't also be the media server (at least for
| something like Plex). But just about anything else can run
| media server, and you can go really low end especially if you
| don't need it to transcode your media. Some software like
| Infuse will stream the original media file to the Apple TV, and
| the transcoding happens on device.
| syntaxing wrote:
| I more or less have running every through a N100 and it has
| been great. Would have been awesome to replace it with an
| Apple TV though
| tshaddox wrote:
| True, but of course if you already have a media server, it
| can almost certainly already act as a Tailscale exit node.
| zakki wrote:
| I wish there is Tailscale for LG TV.
| ilteris wrote:
| Never heard of tailscale before. Is it similar to Plex?
| nickvanw wrote:
| This is useful - using an exit node with an Apple TV is useful as
| well for navigating around certain tools that are geo-blocked.
| Before, you'd have to handle it outside of the device which is
| much more difficult.
|
| I'm going to play around with this later in the week.
| klinquist wrote:
| This makes it much easier to use the Xfinity Stream app on your
| "travel appletv" :)
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| This is very cool, and very useful.
|
| For the average, non-technical user, Apple TV as an exit node for
| other device while traveling is super cool.
|
| But for someone who is out of the country for a duration, it's
| also super handy. Netflix knows all the popular VPN providers and
| ban hammers them on a regular basis. But being able to use _my_
| Apple TV to watch my normal Netflix (or whomever) from any other
| country... because they think I 'm at home? Super win.
| fragmede wrote:
| Network engineers watching rtt/packet latency very closely can
| still tell that something fishy is up, but Netflix doesn't
| really want to block VPNs, they just have to pretend to care
| enough so that the labels don't pull their content.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I've been working on bringing tailscale into container networking
| through a driver, it's still a work in progress but people might
| already be interested in trying it out:
|
| https://github.com/aaomidi/ContainerScale
| drexlspivey wrote:
| The bigger news is that you can add VPNs on Apple TV with tvOS
| 17, I had to run it on my router before
| b555 wrote:
| can anyone share documentation/paper/video with eli5 of
| tailscale?
|
| i recently read this with mulvad too and feel stupid that I don't
| intuitively understand how it works, and what it does and why
| it's needed.
| duped wrote:
| You're on a team of 10 people with 20 different machines
| between you and want to securely send/receive files, spin up
| servers and talk to them, etc.
|
| Tailscale makes this really easy, and fast.
| angott wrote:
| This blog post is a very good technical read (and the diagrams
| are really cool too): https://tailscale.com/blog/how-tailscale-
| works/
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| Tailscale is basically wireguard in a seamless UX wrapper, and
| a bunch of nice (optional) things added on top like
| ACLs/2FA/MagicDNS/ssh.
|
| https://tailscale.com/blog/how-tailscale-works/
| simonw wrote:
| It's WireGuard with a really nice UI.
|
| WireGuard is an outstanding mechanism for building secure
| virtual private networks.
|
| You can run WireGuard on a bunch of different machines (or
| virtual machines) spread all over the world and give them the
| ability to talk to each other as if they were on the same LAN,
| with every packet fully encrypted.
|
| TailScale has productized this. They wrote software for a bunch
| of platforms that makes it trivial to connect those machines to
| your "tailnet" - effectively a WireGuard network which their
| software manages for you.
|
| They tie this to SSO - so you can install their software on
| your phone and your home server, sign them both in using Google
| SSO or similar, and now they're able to talk to each other on a
| secure virtual network.
|
| I suggest trying the TailScale setup process to really
| understand how good it is.
| hot_gril wrote:
| So it's a VPN, right?
| ezfe wrote:
| It's kinda a VPN.
|
| Tailscale on its own is a mesh network that allows your
| devices to communicate (in a VPN, technically, yes) between
| themselves.
|
| If you have an exit node, then you can route your traffic
| to that exit node in the way most people think of a VPN.
|
| It also has Mullvad integration, providing Mullvad servers
| as exit nodes.
|
| If you use an exit node, then its functionally equivalent
| to a VPN with fancy features.
| ecliptik wrote:
| It's a 90s LAN, but with encryption and accessible from
| anywhere.
| Larrikin wrote:
| You have a home server, could be home assistant, a Raspberry
| Pi, your desktop computer. Access that server and all services
| on your phone or laptop from anywhere without figuring out
| ports and worrying about your server being pwned. It all looks
| like local traffic.
|
| Set the DNS server on your phone to a Pi running AdGuard Home
| and block all ads and trackers when on 5G, not just in the
| browser.
|
| Travel abroad with your laptop and designate your computer at
| home as an exit node and now all the traffic on your laptop
| looks like it is coming from that country.
|
| Those are just the use cases I am using personally.
| Mandatum wrote:
| I live reading copy that's obviously written by nerds. This is
| the least corporate announcement I've seen from a corporation in
| a long time.
|
| No mention of how much they live trust and privacy or how they're
| going to make your experience more delightful.
| ant6n wrote:
| Yeah, sounds like a bunch of tech gobbledigook. I guess it's
| written for the users of these services, and they know what all
| this jargon means.
| miki123211 wrote:
| > With up to three users available on our Free plan, you've got
| tools to make a media drive available to other trusted people in
| your life. You can share a collection of family photos and home
| videos into a faraway relative's tailnet, without worrying about
| locking down the server for public internet access.
|
| It's important to point out here that, in addition to this, the
| free plan also lets you send invite links to specific devices,
| which other people can add on their own accounts. That way,
| nobody has to go for the (quite expensive and obviously company-
| focused) free plan, you can share your device with as many
| friends as you like, and you're not sharing anything else beyond
| that single device.
| mlfreeman wrote:
| Will this work with Headscale too?
| angott wrote:
| Tailscale dev here: yes, you can set up a custom coordination
| server in the settings, just like on the iOS app. Open the tvOS
| Settings app, then scroll down to Tailscale.
| hzia wrote:
| Thank you so much for that!! I wondered about this as well.
| Love how above and beyond you guys are going to support other
| OSS implementations <3
| jedberg wrote:
| > But even if you don't have a media server to connect to, you
| can use Tailscale's Apple TV app to select another device in your
| tailnet ... to use as an exit node. This will route all your
| Apple TV's traffic through that connection ... making your
| traffic appear to originate from the machine of your choice.
|
| Oh look all of those family Netflix devices are in one home
| again!
| [deleted]
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