Windscribe's new features give you more control over your IP address

Increased control over your IP address is something many of the best VPNs offer and Windscribe has joined the club. It has rolled out two new features, IP Pinning and IP Rotation, to give you more control over your IP address and VPN connections.

While IP Pinning helps you reconnect to the same IP every time you establish a new VPN connection – it’ll be useful for sites that expect consistency – IP Rotation lets you switch to a new IP address without disconnecting from the VPN, helping you avoid CAPTCHAs and site blocks.

"Both features work over a zero-knowledge API, which means we have no record of the IPs you use, ensuring that your browsing remains private," Windscribe said in its blog.

In this article, we’ll help you understand the benefits of these two new Windscribe features and outline the exact steps to enable them inside Windscribe. Spoiler alert: each of them takes just two clicks.

What is IP Pinning?

IP Pinning helps you ‘pin’ your favorite IP address, so every time you establish a new VPN connection, it’ll automatically be routed through the same 'pinned' IP.

This is a useful feature to have because several websites, like online banking platforms and remote-work portals, consider new IP addresses a sign of suspicious activity. So, if you visit these websites from different IP addresses (as is the nature of many VPNs which assign you a different IP in every session), you may inadvertently trigger extra login verifications or even temporary account locks.

By pinning your favorite IP address, however, you can visit these websites from the same IP (aka same online location) every time. This way, these websites don’t flag you as a new user, allowing you to escape additional checks and interruptions.

Also, it’s best not to confuse IP Pinning with static IPs. A static IP is a dedicated IP address, assigned only to you and “guaranteed” (important word to note) not to change. IP Pinning, on the other hand, lets you pin an address from Windscribe’s available list of IPs for future use.

These IPs, however, are shared (just like normal VPN IPs) and may disappear if the server reassigns IP addresses. There’s no guarantee here, and it works on a best-effort basis. All in all, you can consider the IP Pinning feature a toned-down – and most importantly, free – version of static IPs.

What is IP Rotation?

IP Rotation is the opposite of IP Pinning. As the name suggests, it lets you change your IP address without needing to disconnect the VPN or switch locations. By contrast, VPNs typically require you to disconnect and reconnect to get a shiny new IP address, even for the same location. However, Windscribe’s IP Rotation saves you those extra steps, giving you a more streamlined VPN experience.

This feature comes in handy if your current IP is facing connection issues – which would be evident if you come across repeated CAPTCHA challenges, for instance. This can happen when particular sites, like streaming platforms, detect that your IP belongs to a VPN provider and block it. IP Rotation, however, helps you sidestep any temporary IP bans or site blocks without missing a beat.

How to enable Windscribe's IP Pinning and Rotation

Given these features have been designed to improve user experience, it's only right that they're extremely easy to use. Each of them requires just a couple of clicks, right from inside the Windscribe VPN app. No need to head to the settings menu or navigate too far away.

To rotate your IP, click on the three dots next to your connected IP and press the circular arrow. That’s it! You’ve switched your IP address without disconnecting your VPN.

To pin your IP address, first make sure you're connected to the IP you want to pin. Then select the three dots beside it and click the ‘Heart’ icon.

Next, when you want to reconnect to your pinned location, click on the dropdown list in the Locations tab, press the ‘Heart’ icon, and select your pinned IP to establish a new connection from that address.