Support proxies and improve proxy performance

Problem

There are several users with corporate proxy issues that are faced at several layers of interacting with Cypress including during:

(a checkmark indicates that a fix is in #3531)

• cy.visit()
  • #1459
  • #1608
  • #1312 - described behavior is correct
  • #1039 - this timeout will be fixed once we respect proxies, but the error should still be passed through - #1013
  • #939
  • #672
• npm install
  • #733
• cypress verify (maybe?)
  • #787 - not a proxy issue, but the issues described in comments are, and will be fixed
• accessing the ‘Runs’ tab within the Test Runner
  • #1470
• verifying that the server set at baseUrl is running
  • #1541

Things that won’t be fixed as part of this issue

• PAC support - workarounds exist, see https://on.cypress.io/proxy-configuration
• #584 - SOCKS proxy - more in-depth changes would be required to add SOCKS support - workarounds exist, see https://on.cypress.io/proxy-configuration
• #1352 - SSL verification issue
• #1401 - SSL verification issue - NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS not being used in cy download
• #1438 - cy proxy hiding the actual issue
• #1013 - network errors mishandled - related: #1036
• #1253 (dupe: #3124, #1468) - system policy - could potentially either bypass (hard) or warn the user (easy) or only allow electron - workarounds exist

Current workarounds:

Setting environment variables

Note: these are NOT cypress environment variables, but system/shell environment variables

• If using Linux, you can read about setting and reading env variables here
• If using Windows, you can read about setting and reading env variables here

Set HTTP_PROXY and/or HTTPS_PROXY to your corporate proxy

HTTP_PROXY=http://my-proxy-address cypress run

Set NO_PROXY for localhost to prevent it from hitting corporate proxy

NO_PROXY=localhost cypress run

Other workarounds

For cy.visit()

• Enable permissions in the Cypress chrome extension
• Check the Chrome ProxyMode if you have administration rights
• Try using Electron

For Download

• Try the direct download if you’re having issues during install.
• Workaround for install using CYPRESS_BINARY_VERSION.

For accessing ‘Runs’ tab in Test Runner

• If you need to set up a project, you have to do it in this tab. Fortunately, you should only need to do this once. Try to do this once outside of the corporate proxy then you should be good to go.

[tommorganshaw]

I’ve read everything I can find on this issue and tried every suggested workaround but Cypress still cannot connect to websites through our corporate proxy.

When will this feature be implemented? It is a massive blocker for any possibility of adoption within our team.

[cypress-bot[bot]]

The code for this is done in cypress-io/cypress#3531, but has yet to be released. We’ll update this issue and reference the changelog when it’s released.