---
title: Capturing web traffic with Chrome's NetLog dumper
description: Who needs mitmproxy when you can just ask the browser nicely
slug: chrome-netlog-dump
lastmod: 2024-11-19
tags:
- "browsers"
- "chrome"
- "networking"
- "mitm"
---
When trying to debug things in the browser, it's common to pop open your browser's dev tools or reach for an OS level proxy such as [Proxyman](https://proxyman.io/).

One alternative for Chromium browsers that surfaces useful information is [chrome://net-export](chrome://net-export). That URL should resolve both in Google Chrome as well as Chromium-based browsers such as Brave, Edge and so on.

You'll be presented with a pretty plain looking page.

![](https://cdn.utf9k.net/questions/chrome-netlog-dump/start-capture.png)

You can basically pick whether you want to strip private info and what the maximum log size should be.

Clicking "Start Logging to Disk" will start spooling data to a JSON file until you stop doing so.

So, once you've got a NetLog dump, now what?

You can use the browser-based [Netlog Viewer](https://netlog-viewer.appspot.com/#import) which will render the contents within your browser rather than sending them off to a third party.

![](https://cdn.utf9k.net/questions/chrome-netlog-dump/loaded.png)

This can be useful if you want to share your net dump with a coworker who may be helping to debug a technical issue for example.

There's a lot of useful insights in here such as a full timeline of traffic, including disc cachingwhich wouldn't be captured by a standard man in the middle proxy.

![](https://cdn.utf9k.net/questions/chrome-netlog-dump/blog.png)

There are also a lot of other standard things like DNS lookups which can be valuable for debugging.

![](https://cdn.utf9k.net/questions/chrome-netlog-dump/dns.png)

You can even see what extensions were loaded at the time, which may help to figure out if any of them may have been modifying traffic in a way that causes problems.

![](https://cdn.utf9k.net/questions/chrome-netlog-dump/extensions.png)