IPVanish Brings WireGuard and OpenVPN to Apple TV — Two Days Before the MLS All-Star Game
IPVanish added WireGuard and OpenVPN with Scramble to its Apple TV app on July 27. The MLS All-Star Game streams on MLS Season Pass in that same app on July 29. What actually changed, how far the "only VPN" claim really goes, and which protocol to pick for a live match.
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IPVanish rolled out WireGuard and OpenVPN support in its Apple TV app on July 27, 2026. Two days later, the MLS All-Star Game kicks off — and it streams on MLS Season Pass in the Apple TV app. Those two facts landed in the same week by coincidence, but they belong in the same sentence, because the second one is the clearest illustration of why the first one matters.
Here's what changed, what the "industry first" claim actually covers, and which protocol to pick if you're watching on Wednesday.
What shipped
The IPVanish tvOS app now offers three protocols instead of one:
- WireGuard — modern, lightweight, the fastest of the three with the lowest latency. The right default for live video.
- OpenVPN with Scramble — highly configurable, runs over UDP or TCP, and Scramble obfuscates your VPN traffic so it doesn't look like VPN traffic to networks that try to detect and block it.
- IKEv2 — what the app already had. Reconnects quickly and handles network changes gracefully.
Switching is done on the device: open the app, go to Settings, pick the protocol, go back and connect. It's included at no extra cost for existing and new subscribers — you just need the latest version of the app. Full details are in our IPVanish review.
The "only VPN" claim, checked
IPVanish says it's now the only premium VPN giving Apple TV users a choice of WireGuard, OpenVPN with Scramble, and IKEv2. That phrasing is doing careful work, and it's worth unpacking rather than repeating.
WireGuard on Apple TV is not unique. Surfshark offers WireGuard on tvOS, and ExpressVPN runs its own Lightway protocol natively there. If all you want is a fast modern protocol on an Apple TV, you already had options.
OpenVPN with Scramble on tvOS is the genuinely unusual part. Obfuscation is normally a desktop and mobile feature. Having it on a television box is rare, and having all three protocols selectable in one tvOS app does appear to be a first. So the claim holds as written — just don't read it as "the only VPN with WireGuard on Apple TV," which isn't the same statement.
Some context for why the tvOS VPN landscape is thin in the first place: Apple only opened Apple TV to third-party VPN apps with tvOS 17. Everything on this platform is comparatively young, which is why "most providers offer IKEv2 and nothing else" was the status quo until recently. We cover what separates the three protocols in WireGuard vs OpenVPN vs IKEv2.
Why this matters for Wednesday's game
The 2026 MLS All-Star Game — MLS All-Stars against the LIGA MX All-Stars — kicks off Wednesday, July 29 at 8:00 PM ET from Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. It's carried on MLS Season Pass, which lives inside the Apple TV app.
That's the connection. If you watch on an Apple TV box, a VPN on your phone or laptop does nothing for it. The Apple TV's traffic leaves your network on its own, so the VPN has to run either on your router or in a tvOS app on the device itself. Until this update, running it on the device meant IKEv2 or nothing.
Which protocol should you actually use for a live match?
| Situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Normal home network | WireGuard | Lowest latency and overhead — matters most on live video, where buffering can't be smoothed out in advance |
| Network that blocks or throttles VPNs | OpenVPN + Scramble | Obfuscation gets you connected where a plain VPN handshake gets dropped. Slower, so use it only if you need it |
| Flaky Wi-Fi, frequent drops | IKEv2 | Reconnects fastest after a network hiccup |
Start on WireGuard. Only move down the table if something breaks.
An honest word about "beat ISP throttling"
You'll see this angle everywhere this week, so it's worth being precise: a VPN does not make a slow connection fast. Encryption adds overhead, and routing your traffic through an extra hop adds distance. On a healthy, unthrottled connection, a VPN will typically make streaming very slightly slower, not faster.
Where a VPN genuinely helps is the specific case where your ISP is shaping traffic it identifies as video streaming. Because the VPN hides what kind of traffic you're sending, per-application throttling can't target it. If that's your problem, a VPN fixes it. If your problem is a saturated connection at 8 PM or underpowered Wi-Fi, it won't. We go through what an ISP can and can't see in how your ISP tracks you.
The other honest caveat: a VPN doesn't hand you a subscription. MLS Season Pass still needs an account, and using a VPN to reach content licensed for another country may breach the service's terms — that's your call to make, and we lay out how the unblocking picture keeps shifting in VPN streaming in 2026.
Where this sits in IPVanish's year
This is the second protocol-performance change IPVanish has shipped in a month. In July it enabled OpenVPN Data Channel Offload on Windows, moving encryption into the kernel for a large throughput gain. The Apple TV rollout follows the same theme: the client apps, not the server network, are where the speed work is happening.
For a streaming-first buyer that's the relevant signal. Server counts and location lists have long since stopped being differentiators; what protocol a provider gives you on the device you actually watch on has not. That's part of why living-room devices carry weight in our best VPNs for streaming summer sports and in the wider best VPN services comparison — and it's the same reasoning behind our picks for Fire TV Stick owners.
Before you switch protocols
- Update the app first. The new protocols only appear on the latest tvOS build. If Settings shows just IKEv2, you're on an old version.
- Test before kickoff, not during. Connect, load a stream, confirm it holds for a couple of minutes. Discovering that your network blocks a protocol at 8:01 PM is avoidable.
- Pick a nearby server. Protocol choice matters less than distance. A WireGuard connection three time zones away will still lose to IKEv2 down the road.
- Don't stack fixes. If it's buffering, change one thing at a time — protocol, then server, then wired versus Wi-Fi. Changing three at once tells you nothing.
Bottom line
A protocol picker on a TV app is not a headline feature, and IPVanish's "industry first" is narrower than it sounds — WireGuard on Apple TV already existed elsewhere; OpenVPN with Scramble on tvOS is the actually-rare part. But the timing makes the practical point better than any spec sheet: the biggest football match of the American summer streams inside the Apple TV app on Wednesday, and the Apple TV is the one device in the house your phone's VPN can't help. Having a fast protocol available on it — at no extra cost, one Settings screen away — is a small change that lands exactly where it's needed.
See how we test and rate services for how we weigh this kind of update.
