68

One of my clients is currently waiting for his IT department to install Fiddler on his desktop so that he can debug his web application... Apparently his desktop requires IT Admin rights to install anything.

Is there a non-installable version of Fiddler, i.e. a standalone exe (additional files ok) or an equivalent program that can be run off a thumbdrive or a local folder?

Oskar Austegard
  • 4,599
  • 4
  • 36
  • 50
  • 2
    To the "off topic, close"-voters: Fiddler is a "software tool(s) commonly used by programmers" and as such is very much an appropriate topic for SO. – Oskar Austegard Dec 14 '10 at 03:45
  • 2
    Just because a tool states that it's audience is mostly programmers doesn't make it an appropriate topic for SO particularly when the question isn't actually related to the use of the tool but actually related to the installation of the tool or a suitable alternative. – Lazarus Dec 14 '10 at 16:45
  • “Accepted answer” updated to that of @Laymain’s as some things have changed in the past decade – Oskar Austegard Jul 29 '20 at 11:37

6 Answers6

91

In fact, Fiddler Classic does not need to be installed:

  • Download Fiddler Classic setup (ie. FiddlerSetup.exe)
  • Open it with your Archive Manager (ie. 7-Zip)
  • Open $PLUGINSDIR folder
  • Open the contained FiddlerSetup.exe (yes again) in your Archive Manager

FiddlerSetup.exe opened in 7-Zip (again)

  • Extract the files in a folder
  • Run Fiddler.exe

FiddlerSetup.exe opened in 7-Zip

For Fiddler Everywhere, it is almost the same

  • Download Fiddler Everywhere (ie. Fiddler Everywhere 1.0.1.exe)
  • Open it with your Archive Manager (ie. 7-Zip)
  • Open $PLUGINSDIR folder
  • Open the contained app-64.7z file in your Archive Manager

Fiddler Everywhere 1.0.1.exe content

app-64.7z contained in archive

  • Extract the files in a folder
  • Run Fiddler Everywhere.exe
Laymain
  • 1,450
  • 18
  • 25
  • It is not working for me, Still it needs elevated rights ( in my office PC) :-( – Sundararaj Govindasamy Jul 10 '18 at 21:02
  • Can you try to force it to run *without* admin rights? https://superuser.com/a/981202/310661 – Laymain Jul 11 '18 at 07:44
  • Looks like the installer changed and this will no longer work. – Brad C Jul 24 '19 at 20:34
  • 1
    It still works but you have to extract two times ;) I'll update my answer – Laymain Jul 25 '19 at 12:55
  • I've edit the answer to reflect people who use this method should be aware Fiddler creates the registry key **HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Fiddler2** upon launch. I wonder why they put it under **Microsoft** as if it was a Microsoft software. – LWC Dec 27 '19 at 11:46
  • 1
    Also edited the answer to reflect FiddlerScript Editor is broken in this way unless you fix it manually by moving FSE2.exe from the main folder into the ScriptEditor subfolder. – LWC Dec 27 '19 at 23:45
  • 1
    Again edited the answer to reflect Fiddler creates the folder %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Fiddler2 upon launch, but it can "fixed" by adding a `UserPath` string to Fiddler's registry key. – LWC Dec 28 '19 at 12:47
  • Major note here - using this answer leads me to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57870029/error-failed-to-register-fiddler-as-the-system-proxy - it seems the installation is needed in order to register the system proxy. Any idea why and how? – LWC Jan 26 '20 at 21:35
  • This no longer works as the latest Fiddler release to Fiddler Everywhere has completely changed its install file. No "FidlerSetup" file exists any longer. – youcantexplainthat Aug 27 '20 at 11:22
  • The solution still works for Fiddler Classic which is still downloadable on their site. Fiddler Everywhere is a not the same software, by the way it works almost exactly the same way – Laymain Aug 27 '20 at 14:38
61

No, Fiddler doesn't "Add hooks" that require administrative permissions. You can simply copy the Fiddler folder from the Program Files folder onto the desktop of whatever user you want and launch it directly from there.

The only thing that you don't get in an "XCOPY" install is the Fiddler-related buttons in your browsers (e.g. IE and Firefox) because those are set by the installer, and if you don't run the installer, you won't get the browser extensions.

EricLaw
  • 56,563
  • 7
  • 151
  • 196
  • 13
    Eric, thanks! (And thanks for fiddler in the first place - it is immensely useful). It'd be great to have a zip-file xcopy download option... – Oskar Austegard Dec 13 '10 at 15:09
  • Oskar, please consider changing the accepted answer into the detailed one from @Laymain (which I've edited with even more details) - thanks in advance! – LWC Dec 28 '19 at 12:51
  • 1
    Fiddler stopped requiring Admin to install quite some time ago, so the question itself (and your proposed other answer) is a bit moot. – EricLaw Jan 09 '20 at 16:48
4

You may try either Burp ( http://portswigger.net/burp/ ) or Web Scarab ( http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_WebScarab_Project ). Both are written in Java, downloadable as zip Files and don't require admin rights ... but java. If they don't fit you can either try one of the numerous other stand alone web proxys ( http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Phoenix/Tools#HTTP_proxying_.2F_editing ) or a Firefox plugin ( http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Phoenix/Tools#Browser-based_HTTP_tampering_.2F_editing_.2F_replaying ).

If the application is developed with Eclipse: This also has some simple Traffic Monitoring tools

free_easy
  • 5,061
  • 3
  • 25
  • 39
3

There's a TCP/IP sniffer called SmartSniff that is designed to not require installation.

Jacob Mattison
  • 50,258
  • 9
  • 107
  • 126
3

You may want to try FiddlerCap, which is a light-weight version of Fiddler (using FiddlerCore) in the sense that it captures traffic and saves it to a Fiddler archive. It does require an install by default, but you can avoid that if you:

  1. Install the FiddlerCap download on a different machine first. This basically does an extract only. You can simply distribute the files to the intended target machine.

  2. Add the FiddlerCap folder on the target machine to the PATH environment variable, because it needs to find FiddlerCore.dll in that folder.

sjngm
  • 12,423
  • 14
  • 84
  • 114
Tom de Waard
  • 373
  • 2
  • 7
0

Just try to extract contents from Fiddler's installation file as Laymain mentioned. Worked for version 1.0.0.

For example, using WinRAR:

1

How it looks like:

enter image description here

Artfaith
  • 1,183
  • 4
  • 19
  • 29