I’m a bit of a Linux noob, I’ve got PIA vpn, and you turn it on in the sys tray for Ubuntu network manager, but idk how to access the sys tray from i3, and it seems to be the only reasonable way to connect to a VPN otherwise I have to reenter my username and pass every time. Has anyone got any ideas?
Run i3status and nm-applet?
Yes that is what I use and it works great if you are using NetworkManager.
There is a Wiki page for PIA also:
I have no idea what that means 
Google it. It’s in the FAQ. If you’d simply bothered to search exactly what he typed above you’d get a page full of info.
nmcli con up isn’t an option, it just returns “Error: id or uuid has to be specified” EDIT: dw about it though, your idea about the VPN secrets led me to finding out how to get it to remember my username and pass when connecting using Openvpn through CLI. Turns out it is a as easy as creating a text file with RET in it then putting the name of the file next to the auth-user-pass line in the .ovpn config files, now it’s easy to connect to my VPN 