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Install and first start

Download

Download the package for your platform from the Releases page.

Platform Packages
macOS .dmg — one universal app for Apple Silicon and Intel
Windows installer (.exe or .msi), or the portable ZIP
Linux .deb (Debian, Ubuntu), .rpm (Fedora, openSUSE), AppImage — for x86_64 and arm64

Packages are not signed yet

The packages are not signed with a paid certificate or notarized yet, so the operating system asks you to confirm the first start:

  • macOS: after the first launch attempt, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway.
  • Windows: SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher — choose More info → Run anyway.

Windows portable (no installation)

Unzip Quena_<version>_x64-portable.zip anywhere — a USB stick, a network share, C:\Tools — and start Quena.exe. No installation and no admin rights are needed.

Everything Quena stores stays in the quena-data folder next to Quena.exe: settings, captured sessions, mock rules, the rules script, the root certificate and the web view's own data. Only what you actually use touches the machine:

  • Act as system proxy points the current user's Windows proxy to Quena and restores it when Quena quits (or at the next start after a crash).
  • Trust root certificate adds Quena's certificate to the current user's certificate store. Remove it again under Capture → HTTPS Settings… before you leave a machine.
  • Passwords saved for automatic authentication go to the Windows Credential Manager of the current user; they do not travel with the folder.

The portable edition needs the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime, which Windows 11 and current Windows 10 include. See Portable mode for how the mode is switched on.

Linux: optional helper tools

On Linux, Quena uses these tools when they are installed (the .deb and .rpm packages recommend them):

Tool Package Used for
certutil libnss3-tools / nss-tools trusting the root certificate in Chrome and Firefox
pkexec polkit adding the root certificate to the system store (curl, wget, most CLI tools)
secret-tool libsecret-tools saving passwords in GNOME Keyring or KWallet
Kerberos library libgssapi-krb5 Kerberos single sign-on

Without a keyring, saved passwords last until Quena quits. Without the Kerberos library, automatic authentication falls back to NTLM.

First start

  1. Start Quena. On the very first start Quena asks you to choose a layout:

    • Quena — session list on the left, request and response side by side.
    • Classic — dense session list with more columns, request above response.

    You can change this any time in Settings → General.

  2. Traffic appears. Quena starts capturing right away and — with Act as system proxy while capturing (on by default) — registers itself as the system proxy. The previous proxy is kept as the upstream and restored when Quena quits. The capture switch in the toolbar shows Capturing; the status bar shows the listening address and a system proxy tag.

  3. Browse. Sessions appear live in the list. Select one to inspect it.

  4. HTTPS content. Without decryption, HTTPS shows up as tunnels only. Open Capture → HTTPS Settings…, enable Decrypt HTTPS traffic and click Trust root certificate… — see HTTPS and devices.

  5. Command-line tools work as well, pointed at the proxy explicitly:

    curl -x http://127.0.0.1:8866 https://example.com

Quick orientation

  • F12 starts and stops capturing.
  • Ctrl/⌘ K opens the command palette with every command.
  • Alt Q jumps to the command field — type help there for the syntax.

Main window

  • Toolbar — capture switch; Replay, Remove and Resume buttons; stream, decode and keep-sessions toggles; process filter; the command field; Find, Save, Comment, Text Tools and Settings.
  • Session list — one row per request. See Session list.
  • Right pane — tabs Inspect, Composer, Mock Rules, Filters, Timeline, Structure, Statistics and Log. A dot on Filters or Mock Rules tells you they are active.
  • Status bar — proxy address and state (system proxy, HTTPS decrypt), the process scope (click to change), the number of visible/total sessions (with a filtered tag), active breakpoints and paused sessions, Mock Rules when active, running background jobs, and the disk space used by the capture.

Ctrl/⌘ +, Ctrl/⌘ - and Ctrl/⌘ 0 zoom the whole window.

Build from source

Requirements: Rust 1.95+, Node.js 20.19+ (or 22.12+), and the Tauri 2 prerequisites for your platform.

git clone https://github.com/hkiam/quena.git
cd quena
npm ci --prefix app/ui

# Bundled plugins (optional), built as WebAssembly components
rustup target add wasm32-wasip2
./plugins/build.sh

# Run in development mode …
npm exec --prefix app/ui -- tauri dev
# … or build an installable bundle
npm exec --prefix app/ui -- tauri build