browser-sync cannot proxy https-websites

Question

I use browser-sync 2.11.1 with OS X Chrome 48.0.2564.97 (64-bit)

When I use it as a proxy for http-website:

browser-sync start --proxy http://example.com

it works great and I can point multiple browsers to localhost:3000 so that actions done in one of them are replicated in others.

However when I use it for https-website:

browser-sync start --proxy https://twitter.com

it doesn't work. When I point browsers to localhost:3000 they do not show up in "Current Connections" of browser-sync UI and also the actions are not replicated between them.

Maybe it has something to do with my browser complaining about https:

Is there a bug in browser-sync or am I missing something?

Answer 1

Apparently https://twitter.com is just a bad example. When I try https://about.gitlab.com/ the synchronization between my browsers does work:

browser-sync start --proxy https://about.gitlab.com/ --logLevel debug

According to the maintainer of browser-sync:

any large site like twitter has multiple techniques in place to prevent proxing like this - and rightly so.

Browsersync is a development tool to be used on local addresses that you're working on - in those cases it will work fine with HTTPS - you'll just have to click accept on the warning about self-signed certs :)