Download

Download your evaluation copy of Charles by clicking the link below. Registered Users: Your registration information will be retained after installing this new version. As always, version 3 of Charles is a free upgrade for all registered users.

System Requirements

Charles is a Java application, it requires the JRE or JDK from Sun. If you don't already have it you can download the JRE from http://java.sun.com/j2se/, version 1.4 or later is required.

You probably already have the JRE or JDK on your computer as it comes with many operating systems. When you try to run Charles it will notify you if you don't have the necessary software.


Download

The latest version of Charles is 3.2.1.

Existing users: Please note that there are some important changes in this version of Charles:

  • New SSL CA Certificate. If you have added Charles's certificate to your trust store you will need to repeat this with the new certificate.
  • New Mozilla Firefox add-on required. This should update automaticallly, but if you have trouble please re-download the add-on below
  • Java 1.3 is no longer supported. This won't affect most people as you will be running a much never version of Java. However, if you are still using Java 1.3 please either upgrade to Java 1.4 or later, or continue to use Charles 3.0.4.

Please see the Charles 3.1 Release Notes for more information and instructions.

Windows

Windows

charles_setup.exe (2 MB)
Mac OS X

Mac OS X

charles_macosx.zip (3 MB)
Universal. Compatible with Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4 & 10.5.
Linux

Linux / Unix

charles.tar.gz (1.5 MB)

For discussion on the latest changes to Charles, please see the developer blog.


Mozilla Firefox add-on

The following add-on is required to autoconfigure the Firefox proxy settings. Just download and install it using Firefox.

If you have a "Download Error" when attempting to install this add-on please try saving it to your desktop and then opening it with (or dragging and dropping it onto) Firefox.

The add-on adds a Charles option to the Tools menu. This displays the current status of the connection with Charles.

Note: Version 3.1 or later of the add-on is required for Charles 3.1, however it is also backwards compatible with older versions of Charles.

Firefox charles.xpi v3.2 (10 KB)

Version History

Version 3.2.1

Minor new features and bug fixes

  • AMF3 date references parse bug fix
  • AMF3 XML support improved
  • AMF3 BlazeDS acknowledgement message parsing fix
  • AMF editing: Dates & Booleans can now be edited
  • Editor now automatically updates Host header value if URL host changes
  • Breakpoints: add scheme to breakpoints
  • Proxy bug causing slow Flex (in particular) application performance fixed
  • Map Remote mapping now more consistent - slight behaviour change, can now map file to file.
  • Map Local can now map onto a single file (if you write in the destination path manually).

Version 3.2

Major new features.

  • New features
    • Breakpoints
    • Throttling tool with individual throttle configurations per host and asymmetric throttling
    • Help pages added to most Tools, more to follow
    • Adobe BlaseDS support
    • Auto Save tool - auto saves timestamped session files for long-term monitoring and testing
    • New .chls file suffix and OS integration for opening Charles when you open a .chls file
    • Open .amf, .amf0 and .amf3 dump files directly in Charles
    • Open any file directly in Charles and view it as if it had been downloaded
    • Import multiple session files into one
    • Single-instance on Windows - only one copy of Charles can be running at a time
  • Enhancements
    • Tools with lists of locations can now enable/disable individual locations as well as the entire tool
    • AMF3 streaming over HTTP support
    • Hotkey on Windows to bring Charles to the front - Windows key C
    • Header viewer now pretty printed
    • SWF viewer shows total size of all fonts
    • Raw view added, shows the raw HTTP request or response
    • Map Local tool with case-sensitivity switch
    • SSL performance enhancements
    • Preference option to display seconds or milliseconds and bytes/second or bits/second
  • Bug fixes
    • Fix SSL with Decrypt SSL off over transparent SOCKS proxy
    • AMF3 integer encoding bug
    • Fix HTTP 100 continue bug where headers weren't cleared
    • and more

Version 3.1.4

Bug fixes and minor new features.

  • Rewrite Tool: Fix partial matches in rewrite value.
  • SOAP viewer: Improve detection of SOAP messages for clients who don't set the content-type properly (eg. Flash), and add resolution of references so SOAP display is now much improved.
  • AMF3: Raw AMF3 object parsing support now added for content-type application/x-amf3-object
  • Map Local: Add support for encoded URLs such as those with %20 in the path; these are now correctly converted before looking for the path/file on disc.
  • UI: Column states are now remember on all tables in the UI, so you can now resize and rearrange to suit your preferences.

Version 3.1.3

Minor bug fixes, minor new features.

  • Chart tab now includes charts for sizes, durations and types
  • Request & Response can now be displayed combined on one split-panel (in Preferences)
  • SSL handshake and certificate errors are now displayed in the tree
  • Default single-response recording limit increased to 100MB
  • Fixed Modal dialog lost-focus bug
  • Fixed Mac OS X proxy configuration hang occurred on some systems
  • Fix cookie parsing bug with last cookie attribute
  • Add Unicode BOM parsing capability
  • Change default text viewer tab size to 4 spaces from 8 spaces
  • Map tool now changes the request port if the protocol is changed
  • Version checker now reports OS and Java version for statistical purposes

Version 3.1.2

Minor bug fixes.

  • Fix tool and settings dialog sizing
  • Fix fault in Summary and Chart views for non-HTTP requests
  • Improved file popups for Map Local and Save All
  • Fix Recording settings bug where max requests can't be turned off
  • ICO and BMP viewers now work on Java 1.4

Version 3.1.1

Minor bug fixes.

  • AMF3 serialization fix (when used with edit function)
  • Proxy settings revert back to HTTP when SOCKS proxy disabled
  • Activating tools from request popup menu now correctly activated Selected Hosts mode if required

Version 3.1

Major new features. Please note this version drops support for Java 1.3.

  • User Interface
    • Dialog form layouts rewritten to unify layouts and show correct layout cross-platform (thanks to MigLayout)
    • Add "Minimise to System Tray" option in Preferences on Windows
    • Memory usage indicator now an option in Preferences
  • SSL
    • Map and Map Local tools now supported with SSL
    • New SSL root certificate with increased key sizes
  • Viewers
    • ICO support
    • BMP support
    • AMF tree now shows references inline to improve readability
    • AMF3 bug fix and improvements
    • Improved detection of resource types (using filename if mime-type unavailable)
  • Web Interface for controlling Charles added (Proxy menu)
  • SOCKS transparent proxying
  • Miscellaneous
    • Pattern matching can now include protocol (eg. http/https)
    • Tray icon now includes Start/Stop Recording and Throttling
  • Bug fixes
    • System proxy settings correctly reverted on Windows shutdown
    • Quit cleanly when another instance of Charles already running

Version 3.0.4

Minor bug fixes

  • SSL proxying bug on Java 1.4 fixed (was introduced in 3.0.3)

Version 3.0.3 re-release

Fixes launch bug on computers that haven't used Charles before

Version 3.0.3

Various improvements and minor bug fixes

  • Repeat and Edit functions now support SSL
  • SSL certificates now more closely match the actual server certificate
  • Chart now shows requests that are still in progress
  • Client Process tool added, to show which application is responsible for each request
  • DNS Spoofing now works through External Proxy servers
  • AMF viewer: double-click to resolve a reference restored
  • ASCII viewer renamed to Text
  • Port numbers are now shown, if appropriate, in the Sequence and Summary views
  • Map Local mime-type handling improved for server-side scripting pages and unknown file types
  • Rewrite tool with body rules now doesn't mangle binaries
  • SSL latency now properly reported
  • SSL latency bug for kept-alive connections fixed
  • Mozilla Firefox configuration bug fixed when profile directory couldn't be found
  • Mozilla Firefox profile directory can now be detected correctly on Java 1.4 on non-English Windows systems
  • Windows tray-icon functionality restored
  • Windows proxy settings are now only set for HTTP and SSL as Charles doesn't support FTP proxying
  • Windows configuration file moved to workaround Vista permissions issue
  • Windows installer removes Start option to workaround Vista user elevation issue

Version 3.0.2

Minor bug fixes and improvements

  • Copy to Clipboard: inconsistent image copying fixed
  • Microsoft Proxy Server as external proxy: bug with HTTPS connections fixed (thanks to Frans for his help debugging this)
  • DNS Spoofing and Map tools conflict resolved
  • JSON mime types now includes application/x-json
  • Windows: Installer UI changed
  • Windows: Launcher now supports IBM JRE
  • Mac OS X: Download now just includes the application
  • Mac OS X: Charles Proxy Settings helper now shows the Charles icon
  • Mac OS X: Upgrade to Quaqua 3.7.7, improves file chooser dialogs

Version 3.0.1

Minor bug fixes

  • The new JDIC tray icon code caused crashes on some Windows computers. The tray icon has been removed while a fix for this is investigated.
  • AMF Detail view parsing bug fixed

Version 3.0

Major new features and improvements

  • Editing and repeating of requests, including editing of AMF / Flash Remoting requests
  • Repeat multiple requests and Repeat Advanced for performance testing
  • Chart view of loading timeline
  • Local mapping tool to facilitate local development: use local files as if they are part of a website
  • Remote mapping tool to use parts of one website as if they were part of another
  • User Interface enhancements

Also changed and improved:

  • Summary table user interface: icons added, separate host name column added
  • Firefox 2 CSS: images loaded from CSS files have the CSS as their referer; now included in the summary of resources loaded for a page
  • Win32 launcher changed to provide Charles with its own task bar entry and Charles.exe in process list
  • Win32 application icon added to task bar and task switcher
  • No Caching tool now respects existing cache-control headers and adds stronger cache-control headers to bust caching
  • SWF viewer shows font information
  • Copy to Clipboard expanded to copy text and images
  • "General" tab improvements to include more information, including more summary data and compression statistics
  • and many other minor bug fixes and improvements

For previous versions please see the full version history.