MacOS – Google Chrome 68+ doesn’t work behind corporate proxy on macOS

google-chromemacosNetworkPROXYvpn

This started happening after my company pushed Chrome 68 update (we were using Chrome 65 until then) almost a year back. If I start Chrome up, it runs all well for a while (ranging from 5 minutes to a few hours). Then Chrome stops responding. It won't load any pages. Funny thing is, after that if I try to access Safari, even that stops responding until I restart the system. If I switch back to the Chrome 65, everything starts to work fine.

This is happening with all Chrome versions that have been released ater Chrome 65. I have seen this issue on both High Sierra and Mojave.

My company uses a PAC file for automatic proxy configuration.

Best Answer

Google Chrome has stopped supporting PAC files for proxy configuration. The decision is definitive, as explained in this issue comment:

[...] marking this as WontFix to indicate that the deprecation will stick -- we will not be supporting file:// URLs when the Network Service is enabled, and will be deprecating support completely in the future.

The current usage is primarily from file:// URL in system proxy settings, which is an incorrect interpretation of the settings on macOS and Windows.

Instead of file:// URL in system proxy settings, one can set a PAC script from local sources using Chrome's internal proxy settings. The emphasis moving forward will be on exposing a common set of capabilities through Chrome's settings rather than inconsistent capabilities from system proxy settings.

The biggest limitation is that there is currently no UI for managing Chrome's proxy settings (noted in Issue 937413). So one must install a Chrome extension to modify these settings if not using the system proxy settings.

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