Do Android proxy settings apply to all apps on the

Question

If you set up proxy settings for an android device, do they apply to all apps on the device including the browser? Or do they only apply to the browser?

The reason I ask is that when you go to change the proxy settings on an android device there is this message, and it is confusing me:

"HTTP proxy use by browser but may not be used by other applications"

Answer 1

This isn't correct. Nearly all apps will respect HTTP proxy settings. Xamarin.Android often doesn't but you can override this in your webclient.

PS: If this fails you can use wireshark in all cases to do this.

Answer 2

Not sure what apps will or won't use the proxy. I have a couple of Android apps and they ignored it.

I got around this by using an app called drony, which doesn't require the device to be rooted. I have a few apps and they all happily proxied to drony without having to do anything to the app. I then set drony to proxy to fiddler on my local machine. Instructions to set this up are all here: Setup global proxy in your android device without rooting!

Answer 3

Try postern. It redirect all the traffic to a local vpn and support:

• SSH Tunnel
• Shadowsocks
• SOCKS5 Proxy
• HTTPS/HTTP CONNECT

You can find it here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tunnelworkshop.postern

and more similar apps like it here:

https://android.izzysoft.de/applists.php?topic=cat;id=109

Answer 4

No, they do not apply globally and without root there is no way to force a proxy to be used by all applications. The reason the message you found is worded that way is that it is up to the app creator to respect the proxy settings and use them or do the wrong thing and ignore them.

If you happen to be rooted, you can use this app which will apply the proxy settings to all apps and activities.

The reason that this is not the default behavior is because it could present some security risks. If all traffic could be redirected, users could have all of their traffic be going through some bad proxy server that snoops on them so they default to only allowing apps to use proxy if they explicitly ask for it.

Answer 5

as Julian said, some apps or SDKs inside apps are not Proxy aware.

I experienced this first hand with an SDK. I couldn't understand why it was not showing up my Burp tool. I eventually found out that it was proxy unaware.

As Julian said, you can use an Android app to fix this. An alternative - I used - invisible proxying. Have a look at: https://portswigger.net/burp/help/proxy_options_invisible.html