FoxyProxy Setup Guide for Chrome and Firefox

FoxyProxy is a browser extension that manages proxies inside Chrome or Firefox, so you can hold several proxies at once, switch between them from the toolbar, and send specific sites through specific proxies. Its real advantage over setting a proxy in your operating system is selectivity: you can route one site through a proxy and leave everything else on your normal connection.

That matters more than it sounds. A system-wide proxy sends your bank, your video calls and your work tools through the same tunnel as the one site you actually needed it for. FoxyProxy lets you avoid that.

Before you start

FoxyProxy is a switcher, not a proxy service. It does not come with proxy servers — you supply your own. You need four things from your provider:

• Hostname or IP address of the proxy endpoint
• Port number
• Protocol — HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4 or SOCKS5
• Username and password, if the provider uses credential authentication rather than IP allowlisting

If you are unsure which protocol you have, HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 proxies compared explains the difference and when each matters. If your provider offers both credential and IP-based authentication, proxy authentication methods covers which to choose.

A note on versions: FoxyProxy's interface has been reorganised across releases, so a label may sit under a slightly different heading than described here. The fields themselves — title, type, host, port, credentials — are consistent.

Installing FoxyProxy on Chrome

1. Open the Chrome Web Store and search for FoxyProxy.
2. Select FoxyProxy Standard from the results, then click Add to Chrome and confirm with Add extension.
3. Chrome does not pin new extensions automatically. Click the Extensions (puzzle piece) icon in the toolbar, find FoxyProxy, and click the pin icon so it stays visible.
4. Click the FoxyProxy icon, then Options to open the settings page.

Installing FoxyProxy on Firefox

1. Open Firefox Add-ons and search for FoxyProxy.
2. Select FoxyProxy Standard, click Add to Firefox, then Add in the confirmation prompt.
3. The icon appears in the toolbar automatically. If it does not, open the menu (three horizontal lines), go to Add-ons and Themes, and locate FoxyProxy there.
4. Click the FoxyProxy icon, then Options.

Adding a proxy

This is the same on both browsers.

1. On the options page, open the Proxies tab.
2. Click Add.
3. Fill in the fields:

Field	What to enter
Title	A name you will recognise, e.g. "US residential"
Proxy type	HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4 or SOCKS5, as issued
Hostname / IP	The proxy endpoint from your provider
Port	The port number for that endpoint
Username	Your proxy username, if required
Password	Your proxy password, if required

4. Click Save.

Give each proxy a title that encodes what makes it different — location, type, or purpose. Once you have six entries called "Proxy 1" through "Proxy 6" you will not remember which is which.

Switching proxies manually

Click the FoxyProxy toolbar icon and pick a proxy from the list. That routes all browser traffic through it until you change it.

The menu also has two important modes:

• Disable turns proxying off entirely and restores your direct connection.
• Use enabled proxies by patterns and priority activates rule-based switching, described next.

For occasional use — checking how a page looks from another country, testing a geo-redirect — manual switching is all you need.

Per-site routing with patterns

This is FoxyProxy's most useful feature and the reason to prefer it over OS-level settings.

A pattern is a URL rule attached to a proxy. When pattern mode is active, FoxyProxy checks each request against your patterns and uses the matching proxy. Anything that matches nothing goes direct.

To add one:

1. In the Proxies tab, open the proxy you want to attach the rule to.
2. Find the Patterns section and click Add.
3. Enter a pattern. Wildcard syntax is the simplest: *.example.com/* matches that domain and its subdomains.
4. Save, then set the toolbar mode to use patterns.

A worked example. Suppose you want YouTube through a German proxy and everything else direct:

• Create a proxy titled "Germany"
• Add patterns *.youtube.com/* and *.googlevideo.com/*
• Switch to pattern mode

The second pattern matters and is the step people miss — YouTube serves video from googlevideo.com, so a rule covering only youtube.com proxies the page but not the stream. The same principle applies anywhere a site loads media or API calls from a separate domain: check what the network tab actually requests.

Patterns can also be set to exclude, called blacklist or deny patterns depending on version. Those are useful for carving one subdomain out of a broader rule.

Testing that it works

Do not assume a saved configuration is a working one.

1. Activate the proxy.
2. Visit any page that reports your public IP address.
3. Confirm the address and location match the proxy, not your ISP.
4. If you used patterns, check both sides: load a site that should be proxied and one that should not, and confirm each behaves correctly.

If the reported address is still yours, the proxy is not being applied — usually a pattern that does not match, or the extension left in Disable mode.

Fixing common errors

407 Proxy Authentication Required. Wrong username or password, or credentials not saved. Re-enter them. If your provider uses IP allowlisting instead, your current address may not be on the list.

No pattern matched, traffic going direct. Your pattern is too specific. example.com does not match www.example.com. Use *.example.com/*.

ERR_PROXY_CONNECTION_FAILED. The endpoint is unreachable. Check host and port for typos, confirm the proxy is active in your provider dashboard, and verify a firewall is not blocking the port.

Site loads but content is from the wrong country. Either the site is using account settings rather than your IP, or part of the page is loading from a domain your pattern does not cover.

Everything is slow. Video and large assets expose a slow proxy immediately. Try an exit closer to you, or a proxy with more bandwidth headroom. What actually determines proxy speed covers this properly.

Works in one browser, not the other. Extension configuration is per-browser. Installing on Chrome does nothing for Firefox.

More causes are covered in what causes proxy connection errors.

FoxyProxy or SwitchyOmega?

They do broadly the same job. The practical split:

	FoxyProxy	SwitchyOmega
Setup effort	Lower	Higher
Manual switching	Yes	Yes
Pattern rules	Yes	Yes, more rule types
PAC script support	Limited	Full
Conditional switching	Basic	Advanced
Best for	Straightforward per-site routing	Complex multi-proxy setups

Choose FoxyProxy if you want a proxy working in five minutes. Choose SwitchyOmega if you need conditional rules or PAC scripts.

What FoxyProxy does not do

Worth being clear, because this trips people up:

• It does not encrypt anything. Routing is not privacy. HTTPS sites stay encrypted because of HTTPS, not because of the proxy.
• It does not affect other applications. Only that browser. Native apps, mobile apps and command-line tools need their own configuration — see proxy settings by platform and using cURL with a proxy.
• It does not supply proxies. You need a provider.
• It does not rotate IPs. Rotation happens at the provider's gateway, not in the extension.

For browser-based work where you need real residential exits, FlameProxies residential proxies start at $0.50/GB across 180-plus countries with HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 support, so they drop into FoxyProxy without extra tooling.

Frequently asked questions

What is FoxyProxy?

FoxyProxy is a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that manages proxy settings inside the browser. It lets you store several proxies, switch between them from the toolbar, and route specific URLs through specific proxies using pattern rules — without touching your operating system's network settings.

Is FoxyProxy free?

The FoxyProxy Standard browser extension is free and open source. It is a proxy switcher, not a proxy service, so it does not include proxy servers — you supply your own credentials from a provider. The company behind it does separately sell proxy access, but the extension works with any provider.

Does FoxyProxy work on Chrome?

Yes. FoxyProxy is available for both Chrome, via the Chrome Web Store, and Firefox, via Firefox Add-ons. The configuration steps are nearly identical; the main difference is where the extension icon appears and that Chrome requires you to pin it to the toolbar manually.

Why is FoxyProxy not working?

The three most common causes are an inactive pattern — the proxy is configured but no URL rule matches the site you are on; wrong credentials, which shows up as a 407 authentication error; and a proxy type mismatch, such as configuring SOCKS5 when the provider issued an HTTP endpoint. Check those in that order before suspecting the proxy itself.

What is the difference between FoxyProxy and SwitchyOmega?

Both are proxy switchers with heavy feature overlap. FoxyProxy is simpler to set up and enough for most people. SwitchyOmega has more powerful automatic switching, including conditional rule types and PAC script support, which suits complex multi-proxy workflows. Pick FoxyProxy for straightforward per-site routing.

Does FoxyProxy encrypt my traffic?

No. FoxyProxy only decides where your requests are sent; it adds no encryption of its own. Your traffic is encrypted only where the underlying connection provides it — HTTPS sites stay encrypted end to end, HTTP sites do not. A proxy switcher is a routing tool, not a privacy tool.