Hide My IP is a rare breed of Android app in that it sets out to deliver on its name. This is an Android app that’s designed solely to help you hide your IP address and to get access to geo-restricted content and stay safe online. The app is free to download and use, with only certain locations costing extra to use, and it relies on OpenVPN technology to deliver this feature simply and efficiently. With Hide My IP, users can choose from over 90 different locations all over the world, and there’s no limit on speed or bandwidth. Each Friday, all locations – premium or otherwise – are available for all users to use to hide their own IP. Let’s take a closer look at what the app does and what it has to offer you.
To get started, Hide My IP is a free download from the Play Store, and when you first launch the app, you’ll be greeted with your WAN IP – the external IP that the world sees when you browse the web. For obvious reasons, I have blurred mine out, but this is genuinely my IP.
Whenever you’r using an app like this, it’s always a good idea to be aware that you’ll be essentially funneling all of your traffic through someone else’s servers, but as this uses OpenVPN I wouldn’t be too worried.
There are over 90 different locations that you can choose from here, and for whatever reason I was drawn to the idea of choosing Iceland to test out. Sadly though, that didn’t seem to work out:
I then went to choose Kansas City, in the United States, and after a very short waiting period, I was connected and a notification was more than happy to tell me so.
After connecting to the US, the interface changes a little bit to show your new location and IP, and if you wanted to you can change from either UDP to TDP and vice versa.
There is a way of checking if your IP has changed from within the app, and this gave me the same result:
Of course, I wanted to check things for myself and did so using another, independent website and as you can see below the two IPs match up beautifully.
So, there’s no denying that Hide My IP actually works, and when I was using it I didn’t notice any change in my speed when browsing the web or downloading files, which is always a positive sign. I do however, wish that there were some more clarification on which locations are free to use and which aren’t.
Overall, I’m pretty impressed with Hide My IP, and I like the fact that it’s not a full VPN solution, plus the fact that it runs on OpenVPN makes this more trustworthy and approachable. It’s quick and easy to use and there’s no risk of having your connection slowed down when using this, either. I was happy with the massive list of locations you can choose from all over the world, and at a very simple level this can be used to watch content back home when you’re on holiday and so on. Changing your IP isn’t necessarily about hiding from the authorities or anything like that, and it can be useful to keep your info safe and access content that’s foolishly locked behind borders and so on. While not offering a full VPN solution, Hide My IP is a great way of just getting access to different nations and protecting yourself online, too.
Ratings
- Speed (4/5) – I noticed no slowdown in my download speed and everything ran just fine when I changed my IP.
- Features (4/5) – To say this is a free app, there’s a lot on offer here and it’s laid out neatly in a way that anyone should be able to understand.
- Theme (4/5) – It might not be the best-looking app out there, but it more than adequately gets the job done and is easy to use.
- Overall (4/5) – A solid and dependable app that needs little to no help in getting to grips with, Hide My IP is an app that just does exactly what it’s supposed to do, which is something that more apps ought to aspire to these days.
Pros
- Offers up more than 90 different locations to change your IP address to.
- Doesn’t lower your speed or bandwidth in any way.
- Completely free to use, with no subscription fee or whatever.
- Really easy to use, with just a few screens to use, it takes no time at all.
Cons
- Clearer clarification on which locations are free to use would be helpful.
- Favorite list of locations to ‘bookmark’ regularly used nations would help.
All-in-all, Hide My IP does exactly what it says it does; it changes your IP to something else and hides your original. This works wonders for streaming content from other nations and can keep your information safe online, too. Great for all sorts of users, it’s nice and easy to use and doesn’t slow you down when using the web, this is everything an app like this should be.