What Auto-Update Actually Does, and How to Turn It On

A subscription is essentially just a link — the client visits it to fetch the latest node list published by your provider. "Auto-update" simply means having the client visit that link on its own, at whatever interval you set, and sync the results into your server list, without you clicking anything manually. This happens in the background and won't interrupt the node connection you're currently using.

Turning it on is simple: open the client's "Subscription Settings," find the relevant subscription entry, and there's usually an option called something like "auto-update interval" — enter the number of hours you want (e.g. 24) and save. Some versions also support an "auto-update on launch" toggle, which is worth turning on too, so you get a fresh sync every time you open the client. As for what interval makes sense, most providers update their nodes daily or every few days, so setting the interval to 12–24 hours is a good default — there's no need to set it to update every few minutes or even every hour, since node content simply doesn't change that often, and overly frequent requests can put unnecessary load on your provider's servers without benefiting you at all. If you use several subscription sources at once, you can set the interval differently for each based on how often they update — shorter for ones that update frequently, longer for ones that don't — there's no need to use the same value for all of them.

What to Do If You Get Fewer Nodes, or None at All, After an Update

When this happens, don't rush to re-add the subscription — working through these steps in order is more efficient:

  • Confirm the subscription address is complete, without any extra spaces or truncation from copying and pasting;
  • Check that your network itself is working, and that the client can actually reach the server hosting the subscription link;
  • Wait a while and try again — your provider may be doing maintenance, which is usually temporary;
  • If it's been empty for a long time, contact your node provider to confirm the subscription is still valid.

If you're seeing a "network error" even though your network is clearly working fine, this usually isn't a problem with your local network — it's the client running into an obstacle reaching the server hosting the subscription link: that server might be temporarily down, or your current network path might not be able to reach that particular address (even if you can access other sites normally). Try switching networks (e.g. from Wi-Fi to mobile data) and updating again; if it still fails after switching networks, it's most likely an issue on the subscription server's end — just wait a while and try again, no need to reinstall the client or reconfigure anything.

A Few Real-World Scenarios You Might Run Into

Manual updates and auto-updates work together fine — they don't conflict. Auto-update quietly syncs in the background on its own schedule, and if you know your provider just published new content, you can still manually click "update subscription" anytime for an immediate sync, without waiting for the next auto-update cycle — and clicking manually once won't mess up your auto-update settings either. You can switch between the two freely, whenever it suits you. If you use multiple subscription sources, each one's auto-update runs independently, only updating the nodes in its own group on its own schedule — it's worth setting up auto-update for every subscription individually, so you don't end up only configuring one of them by accident.

What to do when you get a new device is another common question: subscription info is stored in a local configuration file and doesn't automatically sync to a new device via an account (this type of client usually doesn't have an account system at all), so you'll need to paste your subscription address again after switching devices. If you exported a configuration backup on your old device, you can just import that backup file instead, restoring your subscription settings, node groups, and everything else together — much less work than re-adding everything manually, especially if you'd manually renamed groups or added notes on the old device, details that are easy to miss when re-adding by hand. As for data usage, there's nothing to worry about — a subscription update just fetches a text-based node list, typically only a few KB to a few dozen KB, nowhere near the scale of regular browsing or video streaming. Even with a shorter update interval, it won't noticeably affect your data plan.

Overall, once you've set up auto-update, the only thing you'll occasionally need to check on is whether your node connection is working — nothing else requires manual intervention. That's exactly why we recommend beginners set up auto-update from the start, rather than getting by with manual updates for a while and coming back to configure it later — the time cost of either approach is about the same, but the experience is very different, especially once you're managing more subscription sources: manual maintenance cost scales linearly with the number of subscriptions, while setting up auto-update is basically a one-time investment.