One of the first issues I had with the Motorola Xoom tablet, running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) was the lack of HTTP Proxy settings for use on corporate intranets. I had posted about using http proxy settings on the Xoom, which required you to grab a separate proxy app from the marketplace.
Since then, I saw a discussion (I apologize that I can’t find the original post to credit the author.) around using an existing Android activity to get access to the proxy settings, even if they were not present in the settings menu structure. There are several apps on the Android marketplace which allow you to create shortcuts to activities, but these steps are done with the AnyCut app.
- Download and install the AnyCut app from the Android marketplace.
- If you have the default Market settings, the shortcut for AnyCut is on your default home screen
AnyCut shortcut on Homescreen
- Open the AnyCut App, and Choose New Shortcut
AnyCut - Choose New Shortcut
- Select the “Activity” item from list (Note: Depending on what apps you have installed on your Xoom, the first few lines might be blank, but just drag the screen up until you see items)
AnyCut - Choose Activity
- Scroll down to “Proxy Settings” and tap to Select
AnyCut - Scroll to "Proxy Settings", and Select
- Name the new shortcut “Proxy Settings” or whatever you like, and click OK. Take note of the icon, which is the default for Settings.
AnyCut - Name the ShortCut "Proxy Settings" or what you like
- You now have a new icon on your home screen, which will open the Proxy Settings menu when tapped.
Proxy Settings Shortcut on Home screen
- You now have the Proxy settings menu, which will allow you to set a SYSTEM WIDE proxy setting for your Android tablet. This means, that any app that is using HTTP services will use the settings your define here.
Android Honeycomb Proxy Settings Menu
- You can set a static proxy host, proxy port, and a comma separated list of domain names which will bypass the proxy and go direct. This is helpful if you want to bypass the proxy for any resources on your corporate intranet domain (IE myco.com as my example). Notice there is no setting to specify authentication options, so if you are using a proxy that requires authentication, this is not an option for you.
Android Proxy Settings - Set your Proxy
While I am glad to find these settings in Android, I can see where they could improve this implementation. The proxy settings should be per wireless connection, WiFi or Data connection. It will be a hassle to remember to enable or disable this proxy when traveling to and from home and work, or other work sites. I would hope to see further development of the Android AOSP devices to add such capabilities, and not rely on hardware vendors to add these features in their skins. Still, it does solve a problem that was plaguing enterprise adoption of Android tablets in the corporate environment.
If you any issues or questions, please post a comment below. If you find any other useful shortcuts as well, let me know about them!
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