FR: Improve Mullvad exit-node selection lists on Windows and Android

[legowerewolf]

What are you trying to do?

There's a lot of Mullvad exit nodes, and no stats to help users identify which particular exit node is the best available. (I'm not even going to get into the hell that is the current exit-node selector for Windows and Android. You know it needs work.)

How should we solve this?

In the exit node selector, nodes are probably going to be organized in nested menus by country > city > server list. I propose that at the top of each nested list, you provide a "best available" option that automatically chooses a server by load and latency.

On the country list, it'd pick the best server globally. On the city list, it'd pick the best server in that country. On the server list for a city, it'd pick the best node in that city.

What is the impact of not solving this?

Currently, when I need an exit node, I'm finding the country or city I want and picking at random, hoping that enough others are doing the same that I wind up on a not-overloaded server with a decent ping.

Anything else?

No clue if this is possible, but hey, it'd be nice.

[catzkorn]

We've rolled out UI/UX changes for the CLI and iOS, and further updates to the other clients will be happening before we consider the feature generally available (it's currently in beta).

Which platforms are you using?

[legowerewolf]

My Windows and Android devices are where I'm worried about being able to use exit nodes.

[sc1341]

Hi all,

Just wanted to comment that I am still having this issue on the Windows 11 Tailscale client. I have a massive list of all available Mullvad servers in my exit-node list, making it pretty much unusable on Windows. Works perfectly on MacOS, though!

[catzkorn]

Hi - here with an Android update.

I've rolled out a small usability improvement to the exit node menu - you can get access to it now on our unstable android release (https://tailscale.com/kb/1083/install-unstable) and this change will also be included in our next stable release.

There will be more extensive changes made by the android engineers in the future.

[aw1cks]

Thanks for the update @catzkorn - that's much nicer! Do you have any insight to when the next release may be cut so we can start using it?

[rhealitycheck]

@aw1cks hi! the 1.60 release is currently in open testing in the play store, we are looking to move it to GA soon. (hopefully in the next few days!)

[cascadepeak]

The Android client menu looks great. Please update the Windows client to also group Mullvad exit notes by country and city. This would save me having to click my mouse a hundred times to find the one that I'm looking for.

Otherwise, Tailscale is wonderful and has saved me a ton of time and money! :)