wtf is socks5-bridge?

socks5-bridge solves a specific annoyance with Google Chrome: the browser cannot connect to a SOCKS5 proxy server that requires a username and password. Many privacy or business proxy services use exactly that kind of authenticated SOCKS5 connection, leaving Chrome unable to use them directly. This small Rust program sits between Chrome and that proxy, translating the connection so both sides are happy. It works by running a plain HTTP proxy on your own computer, listening only on your local machine by default. Chrome is told to use this local address as its proxy, which is a format Chrome already understands natively. Behind the scenes, the bridge takes each request coming from Chrome and forwards it through the authenticated SOCKS5 server, handling the username and password exchange itself so Chrome never has to. Everything is controlled through a single configuration file. You set the address the bridge should listen on, the address and credentials of the upstream SOCKS5 server, and a handful of safety and timeout settings, such as whether to allow only loopback connections and how many connections can be open at once. The tool also includes a small admin interface for checking whether the bridge is healthy and for gracefully shutting it down, plus a command that prints the exact command line flags you need to launch Chrome with the bridge already configured. Getting started means building the project with Rust's Cargo tool, copying the sample configuration file and filling in your proxy's address and login details, then running the bridge either in the foreground to watch its output or as a background service. A sample configuration file is also provided for running it automatically as a background service on macOS. As currently written, the tool is built and tested specifically for macOS, using operating system features tied to that platform for running as a background daemon.