Proxy Modes
Proxy modes will dictate how the extension should work. You can change the active proxy mode from the menu that appears by clicking on the SmartProxy icon on the rop right corner of your browser. Here are the proxy modes that are available:
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Direct (no proxy)
No traffic will go through proxy servers.
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Smart Proxy
Traffic will go the proxy server if a rule matches, otherwise proxy server won't apply.
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Always Enable
All traffic will go through proxy server unless there is a rule match that prevents it which means not apply proxy to that certain traffic.
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System Proxy
The decision is passed on to the operation system, the extension or browser won't decide about proxy servers.
As the name suggests, when this mode is active no traffic will go through proxy servers. This also means that none of the rules you have added will have any effect.
Use this mode when you feel safe in your network and don't need use proxy servers.
This mode has zero effect on the speed of browser and that means you can the extension with mode for a long time.
This is the main mode of this extension. As the name my give you a clue, on this mode the SmartProxy extension will decide whether to pass through certain traffic of website from proxy servers or not.
How it does it is by using the rules to decide. These rules can be very simple as just mentioning the name of domain or can be complex using regex expressions. You can also subscribe to list of rules that someone else has created and published.
In summary: Website traffic will go through the nominated proxy server when it matched one of the defined rules, otherwise no proxy server will apply to the traffic.
To see how to define a rule in details please head to Smart Profiles guide.
When this mode is active all the traffic will go through the selected proxy server. However you can define exceptions. These exceptions are called Whitelists. A whitelisted domain or rule will dictate that for a certain or particular website, no proxy should apply. The type of rules and their logic is same as SmartProxy.
In this mode the extension nor the browser itself won't make any decision whether to apply proxy to traffic or not. This decision is passed on to the operation system. This means if you have a third party proxy server app that runs on your operation system it will have control of your browsing traffic.
Please note that all the traffic from browser will be sent to the proxy of operation system.