ZoogVPN is a great little VPN service with good pricing, decent server selection and a excellent free version you can use to get started. But their app setup can be a little confusing, in that clicking on the ZoogVPN app icon on your desktop or in the Windows taskbar can cause errors.

More specifically, when you try to click on the app to open it, you can sometimes get an error box pop up that says “the app is already running”:

And the desktop app doesn’t open. This can happen if you’ve already opened, but closed the app, or even if you never opened it yet. And if you check Task Manager, sometimes the app won’t display as open, so it’s confusing. But reaching out to customer support, I found the really easy fix for this error.

To get ZoogVPN to open when you see this error, you need to click on the System Tray arrow, and then click on the ZoogVPN padlock icon with the System Tray menu that displays. This allows the app to open.

The System Tray icon is either a down or up arrow in the bottom right corner of your Windows taskbar. It can act as sort of a holding pen for running, or “sort of” running apps, even ones you may have thought you already closed down. ZoogVPN seems to still stay open in the System Tray, even if you close the interface.

For some reason, you must click on this icon for ZoogVPN to get it to open when you see this error message, not the icon on your desktop, start menu or the main taskbar at the bottom.

Sometimes, ONLY the padlock ZoogVPN icon in the System Tray seems to work in getting it to open.

And to fully close the ZoogVPN app, so you can click on any of it’s icons to get it to open normally again, you just need to right click on the icon in the System Tray, and then click Close.