You have an address and a port, something like 203.0.113.10:8080, and you want Windows 11 to send your traffic through it. This walks through exactly where that goes, what each box wants, and how to tell whether it actually worked.
Nothing here assumes you have done it before. One thing to know before you start: Windows keeps two proxy settings, and the panel below is only the first of them. The second one is what Windows Update, the Microsoft Store and services read, and it is set separately in step 5.
Before you start: what you should have
A proxy is two pieces of information, and sometimes four:
- The address. Either an IP like
203.0.113.10or a hostname likegate.example.com. - The port. A number, usually between 80 and 65535. Common ones are 8080, 3128 and 1080.
- A username and password, but only if you are paying for the proxy. Free proxies taken off a public list never have these.
If somebody handed you a single string like 203.0.113.10:8080, the part before the colon is the address and the part after it is the port. Windows wants those two pieces in two separate boxes, so keep that split in mind.
A paid proxy usually arrives with all four values joined together, which is where most of the confusion starts:
Where each part of a paid proxy line goes in Windows
203.0.113.10Host:8080Port:hp_ir4k2Username:9fa2c1PasswordHost goes in Proxy IP address, port in Port, and the last two in the password box below. Values shown are examples.
If your line looks different from that, or the username has extra words in it, the proxy format guide breaks down every shape a provider might hand you.
Step 1: open the proxy page
Press the Windows key and type proxy. Click Change proxy settings. If you would rather click through it: Settings, then Network and internet, then Proxy at the bottom of the list.
Step 2: open the edit window
Find the section called Manual proxy setup and click Edit next to Use a proxy server. This small window is what separates Windows 11 from Windows 10, where the same boxes sit on the page itself.
Step 3: fill in the address and the port
- Switch Use a proxy server on.
- In Proxy IP address, type the address on its own. No
http://in front of it. Just203.0.113.10. - In Port, type the port number on its own. Just
8080. - Leave the box below it alone unless you know you need it. It holds a list of addresses that should skip the proxy, separated by semicolons.
- Click Save.
The setting takes effect immediately and there is nothing to restart.
Step 4: if your proxy needs a username and password
Windows 11 shows a checkbox in that same edit window once the proxy is switched on. Tick it, then fill in the two fields exactly as your provider wrote them. Both are case sensitive, and a trailing space copied along with the password is a genuinely common cause of failure.
That prompt is the single most complained-about thing about proxies on Windows, and it reappears more often than it should. When your proxy needs a password and your software cannot send one covers the three ways to stop it happening for good.
If you are using a free public proxy, skip this section entirely. Free proxies have no login. If one is asking you for a password, it is not offering you access, it is somebody's private proxy that you cannot use.
Step 5: the second proxy, for Windows Update, the Store and services
The panel you just filled in belongs to your account. Microsoft states that the Windows Update client requires WinHTTP and can discover a proxy only through the netsh command or through WPAD in your DNS or DHCP options, and that for its scan it tries the system proxy first and your personal one only after certain errors. So a machine where only the panel is set will keep updating directly.
Open an administrator command prompt and read the current state:
netsh winhttp show advproxy
On our own machine that answered ProxyIsEnabled: false, AutoConfigIsEnabled: false, AutoDetect: true, PerUserProxySettings: true, which is what an untouched Windows 11 looks like. To copy what you set in step 3 into it:
netsh winhttp import proxy source=ie
Almost every guide still prints netsh winhttp set proxy. It runs, but Microsoft marks set proxy and show proxy as deprecated in its own reference and documents the advanced form instead, which takes a scope and a JSON object:
netsh winhttp set advproxy setting-scope=machine settings="{\"Proxy\":\"203.0.113.10:8080\",\"ProxyBypass\":\"localhost;*.local\",\"AutoconfigUrl\":\"\",\"AutoDetect\":false}"
That form does not support SOCKS5. Neither does the panel: Microsoft's comparison of its two HTTP stacks shows WinINet supporting SOCKS4 and not SOCKS5, and WinHTTP supporting neither. A SOCKS5 proxy belongs in the browser, the download tool or the scraper that speaks it.
On Windows 10
The same values, one screen earlier: Windows 10 shows the address and port on the Proxy page itself instead of behind an Edit button, and it has an older Internet Options route as well. Our Windows 10 guide walks through that layout, with the same netsh section at the end.
Check that it worked
Open a browser and visit any site that reports your IP address. If the proxy is working, the address it shows you will be the proxy's address rather than your own.
The HProxy proxy checker does the same job more precisely: paste the proxy in and it opens a real connection to it, tells you whether it answered, which protocols it spoke, and how long it took. That is worth doing before you put it into Windows, because it separates "the proxy is dead" from "I typed something wrong", and those two feel identical from inside a stalled browser.
When a download has to finish rather than merely start, a paid proxy is the part that stops changing under you.
When it does not work
Everything stopped loading. The proxy is almost certainly offline. Turn it off using the steps above and your connection comes straight back. This is not something you broke.
Windows will not accept the address. You probably pasted 203.0.113.10:8080 into the address box. Remove the colon and everything after it, and put the port in its own box.
It works in Edge but not in Firefox. Firefox keeps its own proxy setting and ignores the Windows one. That is normal and expected behaviour, not a fault.
The browser is proxied but the Store or Windows Update is not. They read the machine-wide setting from step 5, not the panel. This question has been asked since Windows 8 and the answer has not changed.
It works in the browser but not in some other program. Plenty of software ignores the system proxy: many games, most torrent clients, and a lot of command line tools. Each one needs configuring on its own.
Windows says it could not automatically detect the proxy settings. That message is about automatic detection, not about the address you typed. The page on that error explains what Windows was looking for.
A word about free proxies
If this address came off a public free list, expect it to stop working. Not eventually, but often within hours. Free proxies are overwhelmingly machines that were misconfigured by accident, and they disappear the moment somebody notices or reboots.
We publish a free proxy list and we are blunt about this on every page of it: each address there is tested continuously by opening a real connection to it, and the uptime percentage you see is the measured result rather than a promise. Even the good ones come and go.
That is fine for casual use. If something you actually depend on is going through the proxy, that is the point at which a free one stops being a bargain.
