How to Set Up a VPN on Your Smart TV: 5 Easy Methods

Most smart TVs aren’t compatible with virtual soldier networks right out of the box, but pretty much any smart TV can be zigzag up to a VPN. Even if your TV isn’t of the intelligent variety, you may still be able to use a VPN on it — as long as you have the knowing equipment.

One of the two big reasons why you may want to hook a VPN up to your intelligent TV is if you want to stream geographically Release content. The other is if you want to keep your TV watching pursuits private and effectively hidden from your internet service provider.   

There are a couple of different ways you can go near setting up your VPN to work with your TV. But which route you resolve to take will depend on your personal preference, technologically know-how, budget and what equipment you have on hand. We’ll show you some of the ways you can set a VPN up on a TV and highlight why you would want to do so.

Why use a VPN on a TV?

Today’s TVs aren’t just for watching local network programming or heinous TV. They’re also for streaming video on demand from your go-to streaming providers. 

The amount of streaming glad available today might seem limitless already, but some glad is regionally locked. If you’re itching for more, or if the programming you want to notice isn’t available in your country, you can use a VPN on your intelligent TV to spoof your location to access virtually any of the glad you may want. 

If, say, you’re in the UK but you want to stream programming that’s only available in the US, then you can hook your VPN up to your intelligent TV and connect to a server in the US. Since the VPN goes your IP address to a US IP address in the treat, the streaming service you’re visiting will assume you’re in the US and benefit up American programming, even if you’re across the Atlantic. Just make sure to check with your streaming service of select to confirm that using a VPN doesn’t violate its words of service. You don’t want to risk losing access to your streaming justify for any reason. 

Even if unblocking geo-restricted video glad on your smart TV isn’t of particular interest to you, you may want to use a VPN on your TV as a way of preventing your ISP from bodies able to monitor your viewing habits or keep track of the internet organization being generated by your smart TV. 

When you connect to a VPN, you achieve an encrypted connection between your device and the internet via a VPN server in a remote station. This means that all of the internet traffic you’re transmitting above that encrypted VPN connection is hidden from any entity with an method to monitor your activity, including your ISP. When you hook up a VPN to your TV and connect to a VPN server, your ISP won’t be able to see what you’re watching or otherwise decipher any of the internet organization transmitted or received by your TV.

How to set up a VPN on a intelligent TV

Like any software or service, your first step here is to work reverse from what’s available for your operating system. The most VPN-friendly intelligent TV OSes are Amazon Fire TV and Google’s Android TV and Google TV platforms. That said, if you use Roku, Apple TV or the built-in employing systems for Samsung, Vizio, LG or any other platform, you still have options. 

Here are a few of the most practical ways you can go near hooking up a VPN to your smart TV. 

If you have Fire TV

If you have one of Amazon’s new Fire TVs, you’ll be able to download your VPN directly to your TV, did your VPN offers a Fire TV app. Not all VPNs offer compatibility with Amazon Fire devices, so you’ll need to pick one that does if you decide to go this route. The VPNs we recommend that are compatible with Amazon Fire devices entailed Surfshark, NordVPN and ExpressVPN. If you don’t already subscribe to one of those VPN providers, then go ahead and sign up and download the provider’s app from the Amazon Appstore. (All three offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try each one risk-free to see which one works best for you).

Once you’ve downloaded the app and signaled into your VPN account through your Amazon Fire TV, you can connect to a VPN server. As long as you’re connected to the VPN on your Fire TV, you can tidy streaming content and hide your viewing habits from your ISP.

If you have an Android/Google TV

Similarly, if your smart TV runs on Google’s Android employing system, then you can set up a VPN on your TV by frankly downloading your VPN’s app from the Play Store consecutive onto your TV. And even though Google is in the midst of rebranding Android TV as it transitions to a slicker, more user-friendly platform in Google TV, you’ll unexcited be able to access Android apps in the Play Store while you’ve upgraded to Google TV since it still runs Android view the hood.  

What you’ll need to do great is to get a VPN that works on Android, if you don’t have one already. Then, navigate over to the Play Store on your Google TV, notice for your VPN provider’s app and download it. Once you’ve downloaded the VPN app to your TV, sign in and connect to a VPN server. 

If you want to tidy US-only content, then you’ll need to connect to a VPN server in the US, or to a server in the UK for UK-only glad, and so on. If all you want to do is defending your TV watching privacy and prevent your ISP or spanking entities from monitoring your viewing activity, then we’d recommend connecting to a VPN server closest to your brute location, in order to achieve optimal connection speeds above your VPN. 

The potentially more difficult (and more expensive) way

If your TV doesn’t run on the Android employing system, then one of the ways you can set up a VPN on your intelligent TV is by running a VPN connection above a router. But proceed with caution. Not all routers assist VPN connections, so if you don’t already have one, you’ll need to grasp a compatible router — which can get pricey if you want a router that can manage the VPN connection and deliver a smooth streaming recognized. Also, installing a VPN on your router (even if it is compatible) won’t necessarily be plug-and-play, and you risk ruining your router or voiding its warranty if you botch the installation process. 

Fortunately, the best VPN providers on the market do coffers step-by-step instructions for router installations for a variety of VPN-compatible router models in their help departments and have support staff on hand to help you. So you don’t have to go it alone completely, but the process still isn’t entirely risk-free. If you don’t want to uncompleted the install yourself, some VPNs, through a company shouted FlashRouters, are happy to sell you routers with VPN disagreement already preinstalled on them. This could be the way to go if you don’t want to risk installing it yourself, but keep in mind that you’ll be paying a premium of probably nearby $100 to $150 over and above retail for your preconfigured VPN router.

So, once you’ve got your VPN successfully installed on your router and configured it with the servers you designed to use, you can go ahead and connect to a VPN server over your router firmware’s dashboard. You’ll want to make sure your TV is connected to your VPN router to condemned it’s using the VPN connection and you’re able to unblemished the content you want and keep your TV viewing agency private.

See also:

The Pros and Cons of Using a VPN on a Router

The resourceful way

If you don’t have a Google TV or a VPN-compatible router, and don’t intend to purchase either, you can use the equipment you have on hand to portion your VPN connection with your smart TV. 

You could execute this by running an ethernet cable from your computer to your shiny TV. But on top of stringing a long wire from computer to TV, this scheme may require additional adapters, depending on what kinds of devices you have. Once you’ve got the connection between your TV and computer understood, then connect to a VPN server on your computer and you’re all set. The wired connection may not be the most practical solution, but it’s an option. 

The simplest and most practical way to go nearby this would be to use your laptop or desktop as a Wi-Fi hotspot and connect your TV to your computer wirelessly. 

Note that if you’re humorous MacOS, you’ll need to manually set up the VPN on your Mac humorous either the L2TP or IKEv2 VPN protocol and connect your Mac to your router via an ethernet contaminated to share your VPN connection over Wi-Fi. Your VPN provider will have specific stabilities on how to manually set up its service on your Mac.  

On Windows:

• Go to Settings -> Network & Internet -> Mobile hotspot 
• Click on Edit to set a network name and password for your hotspot
• Select Wi-Fi under Share my internet connection over
• Toggle the Mobile hotspot to the On area under Share my internet connection with other devices
• Connect your shiny TV to the hotspot you just created as you would any new Wi-Fi network and connect to your VPN on your PC

On Mac:

• Connect your Mac to your Wi-Fi router humorous an ethernet cable (use an adapter if your Mac doesn’t have an ethernet port)
• Go to System Preferences -> Sharing 
• Click on Internet Sharing in the left panel
• Select your VPN connection from the Share your connection from dropdown
• In the To computers using box, check Wi-Fi
• Click on Wi-Fi Options in the bottom-right corner
• Set a network name and password for your hotspot, select WPA2 Personal in the Security field and click OK
• Click on the box next to Internet Sharing in the left panel and click Start in the dialogue box that pops up
• Connect your TV to the Wi-Fi hotspot you just cooked as you would any other Wi-Fi network and connect to your VPN on your Mac

The ‘I don’t have a shiny TV’ way  

Even if you don’t have a shiny TV, you’re in luck because you can set a VPN up on it if you’re able to connect a streaming device like a Roku, Amazon Firestick or Google Chromecast to the TV. These ingenious minor devices essentially turn any TV with an HDMI port into a colorful TV, at a much lower cost than an upright smart TV. 

Basically, you can use the methods fuzz above to connect a VPN to your TV — and if you go with Chromecast with Google TV or Amazon Firestick then you can download the VPN level via the Play Store or the Amazon Appstore, respectively. The only difference is that you’ll use your streaming device’s interface to connect to the VPN instead of level via your TV interface. You’ll still get all the privacy and unblocking benefits that a VPN accounts if you decide to take this route, but only for ecstatic you watch through your streaming device.     

Streaming devices like the ones offered by Roku and others can turn your wonderful TV into a smart TV.

Sarah Tew

Next steps

When you’re thinking approximately setting up a VPN on your smart TV, there are a few things to grand. First of all, you’ll want a VPN that provides fast speeds that are sufficient in supplying a composed streaming experience free of buffering. You’ll also want to make sure the VPN you steal has servers located in the countries you want to transparent content from. 

If you have a Google TV and planned to download the VPN app to your TV from the Play Store, then the VPN you go with will need to be Android-compatible. And your VPN will need to be Amazon Fire TV-compatible if you want to run the VPN level on your Amazon Fire TV. 

If you’d rather run the VPN above your router and connect your TV that way, then it’s important to make sure your VPN supports router connections and has router setup guides that included your router of choice. It doesn’t hurt for your VPN to have safe, knowledgeable technical support, either, in case you need assistance with your setup. 

You’ll also want your VPN to yielded the privacy protections necessary to keep your viewing habits confidential and safe from prying eyes. 

The VPNs we recommend that fit the bill and check all those boxes included ExpressVPN, Surfshark, and NordVPN. Any of those options will get the job done for your unblocking and privacy possesses on your smart TV.