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Do you have friends or family in your home country that will run an AppleTV box with Tailscale for you as an exit node? I can't get into work from a non-US IP,

Do you have friends or family in your home country that will run an AppleTV box with Tailscale for you as an exit node? I can't get into work from a non-US IP, but I can Tailscale back to my house and it works just fine. I even gave my in-laws (who live several states away) an AppleTV box running TS just to have another endpoint if for some reason the power goes out at my house while I'm gone (rare, but happens).

ggrantrowberry 10mo ago
What is this AppleTV box running TS that you speak of? Sounds awesome.
- ebb_earl_co 10mo ago
  Check out the instructions from Tailscale: https://tailscale.com/kb/1280/appletv https://tailscale.com/kb/1280/appletv
  - lostlogin 10mo ago
    I’m reading that from a departure lounge. Wish I’d read this a few hours ago and the AppleTV would be coming with me.
  - ninkendo 10mo ago
    I wish there was a way to use the tailscale app to connect to my own vanilla WireGuard endpoint at home. I don’t want to use and pay for tailscale when I can run WireGuard myself. But there seems to be no good WireGuard app for tvOS (there is for iOS and macOS though) and if the TS app works as well as it says, I’m jealous I can’t use it with my setup. (There’s another really shitty VPN app for tvOS that I tried, but it also costs money so screw that. It’s also buggy as hell and crashes all the time.) I should add that my use case is the occasional trip where we take the Apple TV with us places and want to access my media library. Or being able to share my media library with extended family (setting their Apple TV up with a vpn to my house.) More complex things like travel routers can work, but are more hassle than I want, although I’m increasingly leaning towards taking the plunge there…
    - devilbunny 10mo ago
      Personal-level Tailscale is free for up to 3 users. So your immediate family is covered even on trips. You could create an account with any one of their identity providers (or roll your own OIDC, it's possible) and just have it not have a linked credit card. The account you use to authenticate Tailscale doesn't have to be the Apple account that you use to log into the hardware device itself - my wife's laptop, phone, and iPads are logged in under my Tailscale account but separate Apple/iCloud accounts (we have family sharing for our apps, etc., but the TS is usually going to be up to me, so I haven't created another account for her). Free gets you 100 devices, so we're nowhere close to running out of those.
- left-struck 10mo ago
  Doesn’t have to be an apple box either. A raspberry pi is what I’m using. I’m in the exact same situation, living in one country temporarily but citizen of another, and I have an exit point in my home country at my parents place on a raspberry pi. Basically any computer will work.
  - devilbunny 10mo ago
    The advantage of the AppleTV is that it's basic consumer hardware that a lot of people have, that you can provide for them at a reasonably low cost if they don't, and that doesn't really require much in the way of tech skill for the person whose house it's in to keep it up to date. You don't even have to do anything to update versions - tvOS will do it automatically. I can't find it right now but there was a post announcing the port to tvOS on their blog where a developer from the UK (but living in the US) talked about how it let him buy, configure, and ship a simple consumer box that uses little power and needs minimal hands-on maintenance to his parents' house as a replacement for a server he had been running in their house as a VPN endpoint for this sort of thing - so he could watch BBC, etc. I wouldn't want to update a RPi that's in someone else's house on the other side of the ocean.
  - lxgr 10mo ago
    Android TV works great as well. I have it running on an old Chromecast that cost less than $50 new. While I still prefer running a plain Wireguard VPN if possible (i.e. when there's a publicly reachable UDP port), the really big advantage of Tailscale over other solutions is that it has great NAT traversal, so it's possible to run a routing node behind all kinds of nasty topologies (CG-NAT, double NAT, restrictive firewalls etc.)
    - devilbunny 10mo ago
      I have run into the firewall problems before. Even seen them that block authentication but -if already connected to the tailnet before joining the WiFi in question - will continue to pass data. OpenVPN would not connect and couldn’t handle the IP address switch. At worst, I turn on phone hotspot, authenticate, then switch back to WiFi. A purely serendipitous discovery on my part, but a very welcome one.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
drnick1 10mo ago
Why do you need an AppleTV box and Tailscale for that? Use any PC (even a Raspberry Pi or any cheap "thin client") with Wireguard and you remove Apple and Tailscale from the equation entirely while keeping your setup 100% self-hosted.
- varenc 10mo ago
  Lots of people already have Apple TVs and the Tailscale integration is pretty good and can serve as an always online exit node. So no new hardware required. Could even remotely walk a non-techie through the process without too much effort. personally, I've just upgraded my family's wifi to Ubiquiti and can then use Tailscale Wireguard running on the gateway as a proxy! (with their permission)
  - Semaphor 10mo ago
    Is it that common outside the us? I know of exactly one family here in Germany having Apple TV.
    - dontlaugh 10mo ago
      It is in the UK, but I don’t think it is on the continent.
    - devilbunny 10mo ago
      They’re not insanely common even in the US, since Roku and Android sticks are cheaper and I don’t live in a wealthy area, but they’re not hard to get or unheard of. The distinction between AppleTV, the hardware, and Apple TV+, the streaming service, was lost on many. Now that they are “Apple TV 4K” hardware and “Apple TV” service, it’s even harder to convey the correct meaning.
    - folmar 10mo ago
      I've never seen one in Poland.
    - chneu 10mo ago
      The only folks using Apple TV in 2026 are like 60+ yrs old. I've literally not seen one in anyone's home for probably 5+ years. And even then nobody used them. Apple TV was one of those products that relatively few people bought but they were loud about buying it, so it seemed more popular than it was. Then other services like Roku($20) quickly replaced it. I'm in the USA.

ggrantrowberry 10mo ago

What is this AppleTV box running TS that you speak of? Sounds awesome.

ebb_earl_co 10mo ago
Check out the instructions from Tailscale: https://tailscale.com/kb/1280/appletv https://tailscale.com/kb/1280/appletv
- lostlogin 10mo ago
  I’m reading that from a departure lounge. Wish I’d read this a few hours ago and the AppleTV would be coming with me.
- ninkendo 10mo ago
  I wish there was a way to use the tailscale app to connect to my own vanilla WireGuard endpoint at home. I don’t want to use and pay for tailscale when I can run WireGuard myself. But there seems to be no good WireGuard app for tvOS (there is for iOS and macOS though) and if the TS app works as well as it says, I’m jealous I can’t use it with my setup. (There’s another really shitty VPN app for tvOS that I tried, but it also costs money so screw that. It’s also buggy as hell and crashes all the time.) I should add that my use case is the occasional trip where we take the Apple TV with us places and want to access my media library. Or being able to share my media library with extended family (setting their Apple TV up with a vpn to my house.) More complex things like travel routers can work, but are more hassle than I want, although I’m increasingly leaning towards taking the plunge there…
  - devilbunny 10mo ago
    Personal-level Tailscale is free for up to 3 users. So your immediate family is covered even on trips. You could create an account with any one of their identity providers (or roll your own OIDC, it's possible) and just have it not have a linked credit card. The account you use to authenticate Tailscale doesn't have to be the Apple account that you use to log into the hardware device itself - my wife's laptop, phone, and iPads are logged in under my Tailscale account but separate Apple/iCloud accounts (we have family sharing for our apps, etc., but the TS is usually going to be up to me, so I haven't created another account for her). Free gets you 100 devices, so we're nowhere close to running out of those.
left-struck 10mo ago
Doesn’t have to be an apple box either. A raspberry pi is what I’m using. I’m in the exact same situation, living in one country temporarily but citizen of another, and I have an exit point in my home country at my parents place on a raspberry pi. Basically any computer will work.
- devilbunny 10mo ago
  The advantage of the AppleTV is that it's basic consumer hardware that a lot of people have, that you can provide for them at a reasonably low cost if they don't, and that doesn't really require much in the way of tech skill for the person whose house it's in to keep it up to date. You don't even have to do anything to update versions - tvOS will do it automatically. I can't find it right now but there was a post announcing the port to tvOS on their blog where a developer from the UK (but living in the US) talked about how it let him buy, configure, and ship a simple consumer box that uses little power and needs minimal hands-on maintenance to his parents' house as a replacement for a server he had been running in their house as a VPN endpoint for this sort of thing - so he could watch BBC, etc. I wouldn't want to update a RPi that's in someone else's house on the other side of the ocean.
- lxgr 10mo ago
  Android TV works great as well. I have it running on an old Chromecast that cost less than $50 new. While I still prefer running a plain Wireguard VPN if possible (i.e. when there's a publicly reachable UDP port), the really big advantage of Tailscale over other solutions is that it has great NAT traversal, so it's possible to run a routing node behind all kinds of nasty topologies (CG-NAT, double NAT, restrictive firewalls etc.)
  - devilbunny 10mo ago
    I have run into the firewall problems before. Even seen them that block authentication but -if already connected to the tailnet before joining the WiFi in question - will continue to pass data. OpenVPN would not connect and couldn’t handle the IP address switch. At worst, I turn on phone hotspot, authenticate, then switch back to WiFi. A purely serendipitous discovery on my part, but a very welcome one.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

drnick1 10mo ago

Why do you need an AppleTV box and Tailscale for that? Use any PC (even a Raspberry Pi or any cheap "thin client") with Wireguard and you remove Apple and Tailscale from the equation entirely while keeping your setup 100% self-hosted.

varenc 10mo ago
Lots of people already have Apple TVs and the Tailscale integration is pretty good and can serve as an always online exit node. So no new hardware required. Could even remotely walk a non-techie through the process without too much effort. personally, I've just upgraded my family's wifi to Ubiquiti and can then use Tailscale Wireguard running on the gateway as a proxy! (with their permission)
- Semaphor 10mo ago
  Is it that common outside the us? I know of exactly one family here in Germany having Apple TV.
  - dontlaugh 10mo ago
    It is in the UK, but I don’t think it is on the continent.
  - devilbunny 10mo ago
    They’re not insanely common even in the US, since Roku and Android sticks are cheaper and I don’t live in a wealthy area, but they’re not hard to get or unheard of. The distinction between AppleTV, the hardware, and Apple TV+, the streaming service, was lost on many. Now that they are “Apple TV 4K” hardware and “Apple TV” service, it’s even harder to convey the correct meaning.
  - folmar 10mo ago
    I've never seen one in Poland.
  - chneu 10mo ago
    The only folks using Apple TV in 2026 are like 60+ yrs old. I've literally not seen one in anyone's home for probably 5+ years. And even then nobody used them. Apple TV was one of those products that relatively few people bought but they were loud about buying it, so it seemed more popular than it was. Then other services like Roku($20) quickly replaced it. I'm in the USA.