Setting up a BlueStacks VM to Monitor Traffic with ADB and HTTP Toolkit

Setting up a BlueStacks VM to Monitor Traffic with ADB and HTTP Toolkit

This guide will walk you through setting up ADB and HTTP Toolkit to capture and monitor HTTP traffic within a BlueStacks Android VM.

Before starting, make sure you've gone through all the steps in the following articles:

To get started, open BlueStacks and start the VM

Launch BlueStacks on your computer
1. Click on the Multi-instance Manager (or Instance button) from the main screen
2. Click Start to open the Bluestacks VM
Open Command Prompt as Administrator

In Command Prompt
Type in 
cd\ and press enter
Type in cd ADB
press enter

Type "cd " (include a space after cd) and press tab to auto-populate platform-tools
press enter

Type in ADB kill-server
Type ADB root
(If you get the device offline message below, just type in ADB root again)
The ADB root response we are expecting is restarting adbd as root

Open HTTP Toolkit on your computer
In the left menu, select Intercept HTTP
Search for ADB
Select the result labeled Android Device via ADB
Go back to BlueStacks VM
Click OK on the connection request

Click Home on the bottom-right side
Go to system apps
Open Chrome

Accept the terms and continue
Do not sync an account

When Chrome opens go to youtube.com

Go back to HTTP Toolkit
You should see the HTTP traffic from BlueStacks, including requests made through Chrome