Charles Proxy

Perhaps it is just the nature of my work and interest, but I use this app more than any other app I’ve ever purchased. I recommend it and the desktop version often. The insight it provides about what your app is doing is so helpful, and a bit disturbing to see how much and how frequently other apps are transmitting data about you. For example, you can easily see that your phone transmits every character you type as you type in real time to Apple, including your exact longitude and latitude while you may only be searching for something on your phone, a private contact, a personal note, or other critically secure document on your device.

The iOS version of Charles is a perfect complement to the desktop version: it turns on and off without messing with WiFi settings, can capture cell data, and works even when you're away from your laptop. Would be great if you could toggle on/off or clear session without switching apps, like via Control Center or Notification Center. Use the desktop version for easier viewing and searching of capture files, and advanced features like Map Remote or repeating requests. If you get stuck, there's great info on the Charles website. Happy sleuthing!

The initial configuration took about 30 minutes to figure out, however it is now much easier then using the desktop app. One of the best things about this app is the easy use once you have things setup. The current price is not to bad for the amount of time it saves you debugging. The work flow is slightly different in that all request monitoring is on your phone, so if you have hundreds of JSONs flying around your app you might find it harder to inspect them on the phones app versus the desktop version.

Having the ability to set up multiple profiles with different settings would be amazing so you can use it to capture with different settings for different apps/scenarios. Another feature is like to see is the ability turn off line wrapping when viewing the request/response body as the line wrapping messes with your ability to read structured data.

I have only used this app for a few hours and has helped track down several problems by giving me visibility to what exactly is being sent over my API calls. Works fine with SSL connections, just follow ALL of the directions. I seemed to have blindly skipped the second step and shocked it wasn’t working! They have it documented well, I just obviously didn’t follow said documentation!