Charles proxy stopped working

Question

I had Charles proxy properly set up on my Mac - it was intercepting https traffic from mobile apps which were running on both real iOS phone and real Android phone.

Next day I wanted to use it and all of the sudden it is not working, i.e. those apps reports now "no internet connection" and I don't see any traffic on Charles coming from iOS or Android (I can see the traffic coming from my Mac's web browser so it seems to be working "in general" but not with my mobile devices.

I've checked it the IP is ok and if all devices are still in the same network and it seems to be still properly configured.

Any clue what may be wrong or how to try to debug this problem?

(when Charles was working properly I was getting the popup over Charles window "confirmation dialog asking to allow network traffic from mobile device" which was enabling traffic; when it's not working I do not see it)

[EDIT] It suddenly started working just-like-that. I think it is my internal network hiccup.

Answer 1

I came across a very similar issue recently. To the fix the problem I had to add the IP address of my test device to the "Access Control Settings" screen in Charles.

Proxy → Access Control Settings → enter the IP address of your device → kill and reload the app

The issue wasn't very obvious. You have to look in the bottom left hand corner of Charles Proxy to realise there's even a problem!