I noticed recently I have been unable to use copy/paste from my iPhone to my iPad and Vice versa. Then I was getting notifications my iPad was not backing up, and my photos have not been syncing.

Today while trying to sync my photos I turned off Proton VPN and it sync'd. My iPad also backed up.

I searched around the net for a solution and all I found was a thread in the Apple discussion forums with a lot of VPN hate.

My iPhone has no issues, both use the same settings for proton VPN, although the specific server they use is typically different, as I just hit connect to fastest.

Anyone else with similar issues find a fix?

None of my Apple devices will do iCloud backups or sync iMessages in iCloud in the background while connected to any VPN at all. Proton or any others. Works fine though if you trigger it manually in the settings app.

Edit:
Nothing works in the background for me if the VPN is active on the device itself. If the VPN is running on my router then all the syncing and backups work fine on the devices as they don’t seem to “know” a VPN is running at all. (I have an iPhone 17, iPad mini & a MacBook Air with VPN apps installed).

My stuff is working with 1Blocker enabled, though to be fair that’s not a “true” VPN (even though it does take the single allowed VPN slot, and shows up in that settings menu).

Photo sync, iMessages, iCloud backup etc all work fine on my iPhone with proton vpn active. It is only my iPad that is having issues.