An extensible HTTP proxy that connects early computers to the Internet.
Image by Hunter Irving
MacProxy Plus lets vintage browsers surf the modern web by sitting between your old machine and the Internet. It strips out incompatible HTML/CSS, converts images to formats your retro hardware can actually display, and provides purpose-built extensions for popular sites — so your 1991 Mac can browse Reddit, chat with an AI, or check the weather.
This is a fork of hunterirving/macproxy_plus — a fantastic project by Hunter Irving. All the clever bits originated there. This fork adds Docker-based setup and a few extra extensions.
You need exactly two things: Docker Desktop and a terminal.
→ https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/
One-liner (recommended):
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jordaneunson/macproxy_plus/master/setup.sh)"Or clone first, then run:
git clone https://github.com/jordaneunson/macproxy_plus
cd macproxy_plus
./setup.shThe script will walk you through picking your extensions, ask for any API keys you need, and launch the proxy automatically. No Python, no pip, no virtualenvs — Docker handles everything.
Once MacProxy Plus is running, point your vintage browser at it:
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| HTTP Proxy | IP address of the computer running MacProxy Plus |
| Port | 5001 |
Both machines need to be on the same local network. Find your host machine's local IP with ipconfig getifaddr en0 (macOS) or hostname -I (Linux).
Using a 4MB 68k Mac (Plus, Classic, SE, etc.)? You'll want MacWeb 2.0c+ by Hunter Irving — it's a lightweight browser built specifically for these machines and works great with MacProxy Plus.
Example: Configuring proxy settings in MacWeb 2.0c+
The setup script lets you pick and choose which extensions to enable. Here's what's available:
| Extension | Description |
|---|---|
| chatgpt | Chat with OpenAI's GPT models (requires OpenAI API key) |
| claude | Anthropic's Claude AI assistant (requires Anthropic API key) |
| gemini | Google's Gemini AI assistant (requires Gemini API key) |
| hackaday | Pared-down, text-only Hackaday — articles, comments, and search |
| hacksburg | Local hackerspace portal |
| hunterirving | Personal page extension |
| jordaneunson | Personal page extension |
| kagi | Privacy-respecting search (requires Kagi session token) |
| kimi | Moonshot AI assistant (requires Kimi API key) |
| mistral | Mistral AI chat (requires Mistral API key) |
| notyoutube | A legally distinct parody of YouTube — encodes video via MacFlim |
| npr | Text-only NPR news articles |
| macintoshgarden | Browse and download from the Macintosh Garden classic software archive |
| Browse subreddits with dithered black-and-white images | |
| waybackmachine | Browse the web as it existed on any date back to 1996 |
| weather | US weather forecast by ZIP code |
| websimulator | AI-generated imagined websites for URLs that don't exist (requires Anthropic API key) |
| wiby | Handcrafted personal webpage search engine |
| wikipedia | Browse 6M+ encyclopedia articles with clickable links and search |
A purpose-built extension for browsing macintoshgarden.org — the classic Mac software archive. Features:
- Homepage with categories and recent additions
- Browse by category (Apps, Games) with alphabetical navigation and pagination
- Search across the entire archive
- Detail pages with metadata, descriptions, file sizes, and compatibility info
- Download proxy — downloads files through the proxy so your vintage Mac can grab them directly. Automatically selects the best available mirror (prefers mirrors without token auth). Download tables show filename, OS compatibility range, and file size.
- Multi-mirror support — each file may have multiple download mirrors (Main, .SE, .DE, CA, FTP, Old). The extension prioritizes mirrors that serve files directly without CDN token authentication.
- Persistent session — maintains cookies across requests to macintoshgarden.org for consistent browsing
- All text cleaned for Mac Roman encoding compatibility
Changes from upstream:
- Subreddit labels — post listings show the subreddit each post is from (
r/subreddit) alongside the author, time, and score. - Outbound article proxy — post titles linking to external sites are now clickable. Fetches the article through the proxy with all images, CSS, and JavaScript stripped out so the vintage Mac gets clean, readable text.
- Definition list layout — posts and comment page headers use
<dl>/<dt>/<dd>instead of elements MacWeb can't render properly. - Comment limits — capped at 10 top-level comments, 3 levels deep to keep page sizes manageable for 4MB Macs.
- ASCII substitution — smart quotes, em dashes, and other Unicode converted to ASCII for Mac Roman compatibility.
Changes from upstream:
- Definition list layout — front page articles use
<dl>for clean rendering on MacWeb. - Stripped sidebar clutter — removed Recent Comments, From The Blog sections.
- HTTPS → HTTP — all links rewritten for classic browser compatibility.
- ASCII substitution for smart quotes, dashes, and symbols.
Changes from upstream:
- Recipe formatting — Monaco font, line numbers, bullet list fixes.
- Whitespace handling optimized for vintage browsers.
These changes apply across all extensions:
- HTTP redirect passthrough — 301/302/303/307/308 redirects are passed back to the client instead of being silently followed, so the browser updates its URL and relative links resolve correctly. HTTPS redirect URLs are rewritten to HTTP for classic browser compatibility.
- Binary download passthrough —
application/vnd.*types (including .pkg installers) are no longer transcoded, preventing binary corruption during downloads. - ASCII substitution — smart quotes, em dashes, ellipses, copyright symbols, and other Unicode characters are converted to their ASCII equivalents so classic Mac browsers can display them correctly.
- Mac compression passthrough — common vintage Mac formats (.sit, .hqx, .bin, .sea) bypass the proxy's transcoding and are delivered as-is.
- Extensions are bind-mounted in Docker — changes to extension code take effect on container restart without rebuilding the image.
- Interactive setup script (
setup.sh) — works viacurl | bash, detects Docker, lets you pick extensions and enter API keys, handles re-runs gracefully. Compatible with Bash 3.x (macOS).
For manual configuration, development setup, Docker-free installation, Windows instructions, preset support, and more — see ORIGINAL_README.md.
Happy Surfing 😎