Charles web debugging proxy does not detect vpn connection

Question

I have a VPN connection on which I test some websites using the Charles Web Debugging Proxy, but Charles does not seem to detect my VPN connection because it does not detect the sites that I run on the VPN network Any help please?

thanks

Answer 1

I had the same problem on my Mac, but I was able to solve it. Essentially, after connecting to the VPN, Charles stopped recording all HTTP traffic, regardless of whether it was started before or after the VPN connection was established.

The problem was the configuration of Auto Proxy at the system level.

I had configured automatic proxy settings and automatic proxy settings in the system settings> Network Settings> Network> Advanced

I could not disconnect them through the interface because they were disabled / grayed out according to corporate policy on the VPN machine, but I was able to run 2 shell commands from the terminal, although they disabled both options before starting Charles and before connecting to the VPN (you need admin access for your account to run them, I suppose).

networksetup -setautoproxystate Wi-Fi off networksetup -setproxyautodiscovery Wi-Fi off 

Wi-Fi is the name of the network interface that I launch. If you are hard-wired, yours may be Ethernet.

This essentially disables both options in the network settings, leaving the URL for the automatic proxy server intact. If you can disable these 2 checkboxes via the interface - even better.

Great, but you're not done yet !!

You need to find out the true IP address of your corporate proxy and enter it in the "External proxy settings" section in Charles. Your VPN configuration may point to an external configuration file. When you clear the "Automatically configure proxies" check box, the configuration URL should appear in the "Proxy configuration file" text box. Download this file, find the proxy server settings and enter those that are in the external proxy server settings in Charles.

Voila - start Charles, start VPN - all HTTP traffic goes through Charles, even when I'm on the VPN - exactly what I need.

Hope this helps and you run it on the MAC :)

Answer 2

For viscosity:

Add this

 dhcp-option HTTPPROXY 127.0.0.1:8888 dhcp-option HTTPSPROXY 127.0.0.1:8888 

in the connection settings under the "Advanced" tab.

Now Charles will work with Viscosity :)

Answer 3

Launch Charles before connecting to vpn. http://www.charlesproxy.com/documentation/faqs/vpn-not-working-with-charles/

Answer 4

Using Chrome and Viscosity as my VPN client, I can’t get any traffic from Chrome to get through Charles when the VPN is connected.

My solution is to use Firefox. Probably because Firefox makes its own proxy connections (and therefore has its own proxy settings), and Chrome and Safari set aside MacOS to make an HTTP connection.