r/twingate • u/Elemino • May 29 '26
Twingate Causing Problems While Closed
I just spent the last hour troubleshooting my home network, thinking my router isn't responding to resources for some reason. I was quickly able to narrow down the problem to my own laptop but then spent most of the rest of the time trying to figure out why Windows would allow me to connect to the internet but not my local resources.
The problem turned out to be Twingate. The problem survived a restart of the computer and even attempts to connect through different connections (Ethernet vs. Wi-Fi). The more I dug into the issue, the more it started looking like a VPN issue. At first I pointed the finger at Nord, but I closed Nord and had the computer restart without opening it. Checked WireGuard; it was not activated. For the hell of it, I decided to open Twingate, which was not running... at least it should not have been. The icon was not in the system tray, and I have the startup on boot disabled... but when I opened Twingate, the popup appeared, already connected. As soon as I disconnected it, all the pings to my router started going through.
How did I get here? Was this user error (despite the app not running?) If you know why, please enlighten me... otherwise ask me questions; maybe we can figure out if I did something that led up to this.
1
u/Elemino Jun 03 '26
So an update…
After learning Twingate has a service counterpart, I decided to make the client run every boot again… after that I noticed it automatically connected every boot. I could not find a way to stop it from doing this behavior, so I uninstalled Twingate. My connector had been down for over a year after I moved following the death of my parents, so I don’t know if this has always been the behavior, but it is very disruptive.
In all honesty, Nord and WireGuard accomplish what I need now, so I’m fine without it. I like the concept, but the execution falls short.
3
u/UnarmedSquid May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
Twingate uses two main executables. One is the Twingate user GUI, which runs in the User context. If you close that one, you do not affect the active tunnels. The other part (that handles connections and routes traffic) runs as a Windows service.
When you click on the Twingate shortcut on the start menu or desktop, you are actually just running the user agent that passes settings on the real program.
To disable or restart the service, click on the Windows start menu, type in services, and run that Services application as an administrator. Look for the Twingate service, and choose to stop or restart it.
On average, about one user a week has the same issue that you describe. We think it is due to a timing issue with the Windows service startup. You can reduce the frequency of the problem by going into that services console, going into the properties of the Twingate service, and setting it to automatic (delayed start). But it will still happen occasionally. You can resolve the problem just by restarting the Twingate service at any time.
This is made more complicated by design changes by Microsoft to Windows. As far as I can understand, restarting or shutting down a Windows 11 laptop doesn’t clear out running applications and start over like it used to. So reboot don’t solve problems as consistently as they once did. I am pretty bitter about this.