Tailscale raises $100M

Unfortunately despite claiming that they would, they've never allowed their iOS application to allow configuration of the control server (every other client they have released does). Maybe some more funding will allow them to focus on the client quality.

(Tailscale engineer here)

That's https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/1572 which we haven't given up on. It's just not done. We did it for macOS and we thought the same thing would've worked for iOS (they share ton of the same code) but it apparently didn't work.

The mobile apps have been a low priority thus far. We just recently hired some people to work on them, though.

The highest priority for them currently is fixing battery life (we do some dumb things when LTE + wifi are both available, and when using exit nodes, and some unnecessary heart beating that sucks on mobile) and then there's also a mobile app redesign (or just "design" coming).

We like Headscale and we're super glad that it exists. (they saved us some work by doing it first, as our control server wasn't in a releasable state) We keep Juan et al updated when there's protocol changes or things they can do. (e.g. recent https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/issues/552)

About the battery usage: what I can’t explain is that there’s a lot of background energy usage on iOS when Tailscale is running even when it’s not connected.

If this was about heart beating, I would expect that to only happen when the client is connected.

Also, in the battery stats, the background usage is there and tailscale is listed, but with - % of battery usage.

However, when I force quit tailscale, all of the background energy usage goes away.