Use Group Policy to apply WinHTTP proxy settings to Windows clients

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Configure the proxy for WinHTTP Services

To Configure the proxy for WinHTTP Services, run the following command in a Command Prompt window that has elevated permissions:

netsh winhttp set proxy "---"

Note In this command, replace the three hyphens (—) with the following text, including the appropriate values for the placeholders:

<server IP or FQDN>:<Port> “<Exclusion list, separated by “;”>”

For example, the following command (shown in English) configures the address of proxy.contoso.com on port 8080, and has exclusions for “localhost” and the “contoso.com” domain:

netsh winhttp set proxy proxy.contoso.com:8080 "localhost;*.contoso.com"

Other available parameters

Import the settings through Control Panel

You can also import the settings from the Internet Options item in Control Panel. You can use following command:

netsh winhttp import proxy source=ie

Note This command does not support scripts, such as PAC or DAT files. This command works only for the manual proxy configuration in Internet Properties > Connection. It does not work for the Use automatic configuration script option. By default, Direct Access configuration tries to locate a proxy script by using the Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Protocol process.

To verify that the proxy settings are correctly applied to WinHTTP Services, run the following command:

netsh winhttp show proxy

If no proxy setting is applied, you receive the following output:

Current WinHTTP proxy settings:

    Direct access (no proxy server).

If a proxy setting is applied, you receive the following output:

Current WinHTTP proxy settings:

    Proxy Server(s) : proxy.contoso.com:8080
    Bypass List : localhost;*.contoso.com

Note If you have everything correctly set up and you want to restore a direct connection, run the following command:

netsh winhttp reset proxy

How proxy data is stored in Windows

All the configurations are stored in a registry value that is located in the following path:

Registry Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Connections
Value: WinHttpSettings
Type: Binary
Data (for Direct Access or No Proxy): 1800000000000000010000000000000000000000

After you change the proxy settings, the registry value changes as follows:

Use Group policy to deploy proxy settings to clients

After you set up the correct proxy configuration and the registry key, you can use Group Policy to deploy proxy settings to clients.

Note We recommend that you test these settings before you apply them to a production environment. Follow these steps first on an organizational unit that has Block Inheritance applied and has only a few computer objects assigned. Applying this setting in a domain-wide scope may affect core infrastructure server functionality (for example, DHCP servers or domain controllers) and may adversely affect your environment.

1. Open the Group Policy Management Console from a computer that has the correct proxy settings for WinHTTP Services. Then, create a Group Policy Object, such as TestWinhttpProxy.
2. Edit the GPO, and locate the following path:  Computer Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry
3. Right-click Registry, and select New > Registry Item.
4. On the General tab, set the Action value as Update, and then browse for your local WinHttpSettings registry key.    
5. Click OK, and close the editor. The following result is displayed.    
6. Link the GPO to the desired OU.    

You can either wait for the Group Policy Object to be applied to clients or you can run GPUPDATE /FORCEto apply the policy immediately.

From a computer that’s located in the target OU, run the following command to make sure that WinHTTP Services proxy settings are applied successfully:

netsh winhttp show proxy