WrapVPN on your Android TV

A smart TV sits on your home network all day. Even while you're scrolling through menus, its apps are fetching artwork, reporting what you watched, loading adverts and checking in with measurement services. Each of those starts with a request your internet provider can see.

With WrapVPN running on the TV, that traffic travels encrypted from the TV to our exit server before it goes anywhere else. Your provider sees a connection to the exit server, not the list of places the TV talks to.

There's one catch people often miss: a VPN on your phone protects your phone. It does nothing for the TV in the corner, even when both share the same Wi-Fi. If you want the TV covered, the app has to run on the TV.

There's no special television edition to look for. The WrapVPN app in Google Play installs on Android TV just as it does on a phone, and it shows up among the TV's apps like anything else you've installed.

Your plan doesn't care what size the screen is. Plans belong to your WrapVPN account, no plan has a device limit, and the account is meant for your household, which is exactly where the TV lives. If you already pay for WrapVPN on your phone, there's nothing more to buy.

Here's the worked example: a Sunday evening, the living-room TV, and a remote in your hand. Open Google Play on the TV, find WrapVPN (by voice, if your remote has a microphone), and install it.

Open the app and choose the same sign-in you used on your phone, Apple or Google. This matters more than it looks: an Apple sign-in that hides your email address can end up as a separate account from a Google one, and your plan is in only one of them. If you sign in with Apple, expect to type on the on-screen keyboard one letter at a time, which is a fine way to practise patience.

Next comes Android's connection request, the same one-time question your phone asked. Accept it with the remote. Then pick a location near you, say London if you're in the UK, because a nearby location usually has the lowest speed figure, and connect.

That's the whole setup. From here the TV behaves exactly as before, except that its traffic now goes through the tunnel.

TV apps are some of the most ad-heavy software you'll ever own, so Clean Web, our ad and tracker blocker, earns its place here. It stops the TV looking up the addresses of known advertising and tracking domains, so those connections never start. On Android, and therefore on Android TV, it's switched on by default.

It works across every app on the TV that uses the system's normal lookups, which saves data and keeps a little clutter off the screen.

It has an honest limit. Clean Web works by domain name, so an advert delivered from the same place as the programme itself can't be told apart and will still play. Think of it as fewer trackers and fewer adverts, not none.

A TV is the kind of device you set up once and forget, so turn on Auto-Connect in the app's Settings. With it on, WrapVPN reconnects whenever the TV has a network, and if you disconnect on purpose it leaves things alone until you connect again.

If you're trying WrapVPN on the free plan, you get three one-hour sessions a week, shared by every device on your account. Each hour runs from the moment the session starts, even if you disconnect, so the free plan suits a trial evening better than a TV that's on all weekend.

Install WrapVPN from Google Play on the TV, sign in with the account from your phone, and accept Android's question once. A few minutes with the remote, and the busiest computer in the house is protected like the rest of your devices.