Step-By-Step: Changing a Public VPN to Private in Windows 10

  • Article

Have a need to hide your VPN connections from public view? Here is a quick and easy way to change the visibility of your VPN connection in Windows 10 from public to private.

It will require a registry edit and as such best practice would dictate that making a backup of said registry before proceeding would be a good idea.

1. Run RegEdit and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles

2. Click through the list of profiles presented to find the desired VPN name detailed under ProfileName within the right pane

 

Windows10_VPN_Public_Private_001

 

3. Double click Category once the correct profile has been found and change the value data to 1

 

4. Reboot the computer

Once completed, the VPN connection will no longer be visible.  These steps will work with Windows 10 Home as well as Windows 10 Pro.