Use an Android Phone’s Proxy over USB with adb Forwarding

Understand an adb-forward connection from a laptop to a phone-hosted HTTP proxy, including loopback addresses, cellular egress and the separate SSH SOCKS variant.

If an authorized Android device already runs an HTTP proxy reachable by adb on port 8080, forward a laptop port to it:

adb -s DEVICE_SERIAL forward tcp:6400 tcp:8080

Use the device's actual serial, then set the laptop browser's HTTP proxy to 127.0.0.1:6400. The first port is the laptop endpoint; the second is the phone service. adb supplies the TCP path, not the proxy protocol.

laptop browser
  -> laptop 127.0.0.1:6400
  -> adb USB forwarding
  -> phone TCP port 8080
  -> phone's outbound network

The phone proxy must support the requested operations, including CONNECT for browser HTTPS. Use USB debugging only with the authorized device and a trusted computer. This path does not require the carrier to admit unsolicited internet connections to the phone.

Verify the exit separately from USB reachability. The proxy uses the phone's selected outbound network unless its application binds another one. Active Wi-Fi, a VPN or explicit app routing can make the exit different from mobile data.

If the phone instead runs an SSH server, forward that port and create SOCKS on the laptop:

adb -s DEVICE_SERIAL forward tcp:2222 tcp:2222
ssh -N -D 127.0.0.1:8899 -p 2222 [email protected]

Here the browser uses SOCKS at 127.0.0.1:8899, and SSH opens destination connections on the phone. It is an alternative to forwarding the HTTP proxy directly; neither arrangement requires a public listener.

When finished, remove the specific adb entry, for example adb -s DEVICE_SERIAL forward --remove tcp:6400. Closing the browser does not remove the forwarding state.

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