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Quick start
Capture and decrypt your first HTTPS request with Cloak Proxy in about five minutes, from trusting the certificate to reading a JSON response.
This guide takes you from a fresh install to a decrypted HTTPS request you can read, in about five minutes. You’ll trust the certificate, capture your Mac’s traffic, turn on SSL Proxying for one app, and inspect a response.
Before you start
Section titled “Before you start”Install Cloak Proxy and open it. You need your Mac password twice: once to trust the certificate, and possibly once for macOS to change the proxy settings.
Decrypt your first request
Section titled “Decrypt your first request”-
Trust the certificate. In the orange banner Trust the Cloak Proxy certificate to decrypt HTTPS, click Install & Trust… and confirm with your password.
The banner disappears, and the status bar at the bottom right shows CA trusted.
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Check that macOS traffic is captured. Cloak Proxy turns the macOS proxy on when it opens. The pill in the middle of the toolbar reads Capturing · 127.0.0.1:9090, and the status bar shows macOS traffic: On.
If it says macOS traffic: Off. Click to capture, click it, or press ⇧ ⌘ P.
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Make some traffic. Open Safari and load any HTTPS website.
Requests appear in the list. HTTPS rows show the method
CONNECTand a closed lock: Cloak Proxy passes them through without reading them, because nothing is set up for decryption yet. -
Turn on SSL Proxying for the app. In the sidebar under Apps, click Safari. In the bar above the list, click Enable SSL Proxying for All Requests from Safari.
Cloak Proxy closes Safari’s open encrypted connections so it reconnects. The new connections are decrypted.
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Reload the page in Safari. New rows appear with a green open lock, real methods such as
GET, status codes, types and sizes. -
Inspect a request. Click a row. The inspector below the list shows the Request on the left and the Response on the right. Pick a JSON response and open its Body tab to see it as a collapsible tree.
Decrypted traffic: the list on top, the selected request's details below.
- A green open lock means the request was decrypted
- The selected request's method, URL, status, time, size and app
- Request tabs: headers, query, body, cookies and more
- Response tabs, with the body shown as a JSON tree
If nothing shows up
Section titled “If nothing shows up”| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| Waiting for traffic and macOS traffic: Off | Click Capture macOS Traffic in the empty list, or press ⇧ ⌘ P. |
| An alert that macOS doesn’t report the proxy as active | A VPN or a configuration profile may be overriding proxy settings. Disconnect the VPN and try again. |
| Rows stay locked after you turn on SSL Proxying | Make sure the status bar says CA trusted, then reload so the app opens new connections. |
| A row says the TLS handshake with the client failed | The app doesn’t trust the Cloak Proxy certificate, or it pins its certificates. See Locked tunnels and pinned apps. |
| A command-line tool’s requests don’t appear | Most command-line tools ignore the macOS proxy. Use a configured Terminal. |
| An app’s requests never appear, even with the proxy on | The app ignores the macOS proxy. Look for it under Not Using the Proxy in the sidebar. See Apps that ignore the proxy. |
Turn it off when you’re done
Section titled “Turn it off when you’re done”Quit Cloak Proxy with ⌘ Q. Your previous proxy settings come back. To stop capturing without quitting, click macOS traffic: On in the status bar or press ⇧ ⌘ P.
Next steps
Section titled “Next steps”- Filter the list by host, status or content type: Filtering.
- Change a response without touching the server: Map Local and Breakpoint.
- Capture an iPhone or Android device: Devices.
- See which endpoints your app calls and spot leaked secrets: Insights.