My situation is:

  • I'm using a computer with firefox running
  • I have an ssh server

I want to browse the internet as if I was browsing from the ssh server.

To do that, I use the ssh server as proxy in firefox.

In a terminal, I open an ssh tunnel and forward port 9090:

ssh -D9090 -N user@mysshserver

Then firefox has to be configured to use the ssh tunnel:

  • open Preferences
  • open Network Settings (scroll down in General tab)
  • choose Manual proxy configuration
  • in the SOCKS Host field, write localhost and in the Port field, write 9090
  • keep the SOCKS v5 button selected
  • click OK

Done.

To browse from the computer again, choose No proxy in Network Settings.

Downloading videos with yt-dlp through ssh proxy

Start ssh in same way as before and run in another terminal:

# ssh -D9090 -N user@mysshserver
yt-dlp --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:9090/ urlToVideo

hashtags: #firefox #ssh #yt-dlp