The list is in the Proxy Settings, SSL tab. You must specifically identify the host names you want to enable SSL Proxying on. With SSL proxying turned off Charles just forwards all SSL traffic directly to the target web server. You may turn on or off this SSL proxying in the Proxy Preferences. This functionality is essential for debugging secure (SSL) web applications. The communication is SSL (encrypted) from web browser to Charles and also SSL (encrypted) from Charles to the web server. If you add the Charles CA Certificate to your trusted certificates you will no longer see any warnings – see below for how to do this.Ĭharles still communicates via SSL to the web server. Therefore you will see a security warning, indicating that the root authority is not trusted. Charles receives the server’s certificate, while your browser receives Charles’s certificate. Instead of your browser seeing the server’s certificate, Charles dynamically generates a certificate for the server and signs it with its own root certificate (the Charles CA Certificate). Charles can be used as a man-in-the-middle HTTPS proxy, enabling you to view in plain text the communication between web browser and SSL web server.Ĭharles does this by becoming a man-in-the-middle.