Proxy and Local setup

Learn how to configure local testing, tunnel routing, and proxy settings so Test Companion can reach BrowserStack from your network.

If your organization’s network blocks direct outbound connections to BrowserStack, or if your apps and websites run on localhost or behind a corporate firewall, the Proxy and Local Setup panel lets you configure how Test Companion connects. The panel has two regions:

• Local controls whether Test Companion can reach apps and websites running on your local machine, and whether all session traffic must flow through your local network.
• Proxy controls how Test Companion routes traffic to BrowserStack when your network requires a proxy server.

Configure proxy settings

1. Click the gear icon (⚙) in the top-right corner of the Test Companion panel.

   

2. Select the Proxy and Local Setup tab in the sidebar.

   

3. Configure the Local and Proxy settings to match your network.
4. Click Save to apply your changes, or Cancel to discard them.

Local

The Local region controls how Test Companion reaches resources on your local machine and how session traffic flows through your network.

Local testing

Turn on Local testing to test apps and websites that are not publicly accessible, including:

• Web apps running on localhost or a private staging URL.
• Mobile apps that call APIs on your development machine or internal servers.
• Any environment behind a corporate firewall that BrowserStack devices cannot reach directly.

When Local testing is on, Test Companion establishes a secure tunnel between BrowserStack devices and your machine. The tunnel uses BrowserStack Local under the hood and starts automatically when a session begins.

Turn Local testing off when you only test public URLs and want to skip tunnel startup.

Force Local Tunnel

Turn on Force Local Tunnel to route every session connection through your local network instead of the public internet. With this option on, BrowserStack devices reach all destinations, including public URLs, through your machine.

Use Force Local Tunnel when:

• Your security policy requires that all outbound traffic from test sessions egress through your corporate network.
• You need every request to pass through your network’s monitoring, filtering, or logging tools.
• You are debugging a routing issue and want to confirm that traffic is flowing through the tunnel.

Force Local Tunnel requires Local testing to be on. The setting maps to the forcelocal option on browserStackLocalOptions.

Proxy

The Proxy type dropdown controls how Test Companion routes traffic to BrowserStack. Select the option that matches your network configuration. None is selected when you first open the panel.

None

Test Companion connects directly to BrowserStack. No proxy is used.

Choose None when your network allows direct outbound connections to BrowserStack without any proxy or firewall restrictions. This is the right choice for most individual setups and home networks.

Standard proxy

Test Companion routes BrowserStack Local and WebDriver traffic through a standard HTTP proxy.

Choose Standard proxy when your corporate network requires all outbound traffic to pass through an HTTP proxy server.

When you select Standard proxy, the following fields appear:

Local MITM proxy

Test Companion routes traffic through a local man-in-the-middle proxy, for example mitmproxy. Use this when outbound TLS must be inspected.

Choose Local MITM proxy when your security team requires TLS inspection of outbound traffic, or when you need to debug requests between Test Companion and BrowserStack using a local interception proxy.

When you select Local MITM proxy, the following fields appear:

PAC file

Test Companion uses a PAC (Proxy Auto-Configuration) file to choose the upstream proxy on a per-request basis.

Choose PAC file when your network uses different proxies for different destinations and a PAC file already defines the routing rules.

When you select PAC file, the following field appears: